In the article captioned below, Peter Jansen asks about periodical price
inflation.

A serious analysis is provided by Ronald E Akie in "Predicting Journal
Subscription Prices" (PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY 12,2 Summer 1996 p.
9-17), showing the contributions to pricing made by inflation, increased
numbers of pages, cancellations, and currency exchange rates.

If you are interested in doing something about the problems of
periodicals' prices, please read my editorial in the same issue, p. 6-8,
on "Publishing and the Productivity of R&D."  The great difference in
financial support for research, which generates ever increasing numbers of
research articles, and for libraries, which are ever less able to collect
and disseminate this information, is outrageous. It is even more baffling
when it has been shown repeatedly that information supplied by libraries
is the major cost-effective ingredient in research.

Particularly repugnant, by the way, is the suggestion that publishers are
on a gravy train. Learned publishing is the only segment of the industry
where authors are routinely asked to subsidize the dissemination of
research which already carries an investment of hundreds of thousands of
dollars or more. More often than not publishers have used reserves, cut
valuable coverage, and pushed vendor credit to the limit in order to
minimize price increases. Publishers are also over a barrel because their
prices must be fixed far in advance of incurring their costs. My analysis
of the Periodicals Price Index ("Forecasting Changes in Periodicals
Prices" in SERIALS LIBRARIAN 21,4 1992:33-43) between 1977 and 1990, for
instance, indicated that it took two years for most publishers' prices to
react to the inflationary spike of 1980!

Albert Henderson, Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY
70244.1532@compuserve.com

---------- Forwarded Message ----------

From:   Peter Jansen, INTERNET:p.jansen@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ
TO:     SERIALST, INTERNET:SERIALST@UVMVM.UVM.EDU
DATE:   4/8/97 10:16 PM

RE:     Periodical Price Inflation
Dear Serialist

Re: Virginia Roy's email entitled "1997 Price Index for
Canadian Libraries" in which indicates that "Periodical price
inflation reaches lowest level in eight years", it being only
projected to rise by 10.28%.

The publishers gravy train certainly seems to be going to full steam
ahead. At a time of between 1 - 4% inflation in most industrialised
economies these price increases seem extravagant, as do the 10%+
 increases in each of the last eight years.

I realise that the supply of many academic journals is relatively low, hence
the high price. However, one would think this would be built into the
original publication price of the journal, and would not impact on any
subsequent price inflation.

How do publishers justify (if at all) such increases ?

And more importantly, is there anything that can be done about it ?

Regards

Peter Jansen
Acquisitions Librarian
Philson Library
University of Auckland
Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand
Phone (+64 9) 373 7599 ext 6131
Fax (+64 9) 373 7491
<p.jansen@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>