The cost of publishing an electronic journal : a general model and a case study

Abstract

In their excellent review of the development of scholarly publishing in the United States, Tenopir and King [1997] present evidence showing that the average institutional price of a scholarly journal subscription has increased from $39 in 1975 to $284 in 1995, a factor of 7.3 in just twenty years. Based on these figures, Tenopir and King conclude that: "It is clear that traditional scholarly publishing is in serious economic difficulty". General inflation and increase in size (more pages per issue, more issues per volume, more volumes per year) of the journals, account for only 52 percent of the price increase.