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Scholarly Communication: Journal Inflation

Information of scholarly communication that may be of intererst to the SIUE community

Journal Cost and Value Information

The following links provide information on journal pricing and studies that have been done by academic libraries and open access organizations: 

Ulrich’s Periodical Directory – the leading directory providing current pricing of journals

Ted Bergstrom’s Journal Pricing Page - provides subscription fee information for journals

Publisher and Journals Profiles - good information compiled by the UC Office of Scholarly Communications

American Mathematical Society Journal Price Survey - a 2004-2009 mathematics journals price study.

University of Wisconsin Libraries Journal Value Project  - an interesting 2004 Journals Pricing Analysis project.

UC Report on Value-Based Journal Prices - This technique posits that a journal's institutional price should and can be related to its value to the academic enterprise and that this value can be quantified and used in negotiations with publishers. The committee's resulting report, The Promise of Value-based Journal Prices and Negotiation: A UC Report and View Forward, proposes a model in which prices are set or negotiated in relation to four key elements: alternative base prices that account for scholarly value, transparency for annual price increases, value-added contributions from the purchasing/leasing institution, and transaction efficiencies.

SPARC Journal Pricing Information - A good site for watching how libraries are documenting journal prices.

Sherpa-RoMEO - this site documents publisher's copyright policies and self-archiving statements.

Open Society Initiative

OSI's work in the field of open access is based upon the principles outlined in the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), which arose from a meeting organized by OSI in December 2001. The BOAI offered the first definition of open access as free online access to peer-reviewed research articles achieved through the development of open access journals and institutional or subject-based article repositories.

OSI has supported many of the projects which underpin the OA movement, such as the Directory of Open Access Journals, Directory of Open Access Repositories, OASIS and Open Access News. However, the bulk of OSI's work and funding is focused on advocacy. The Open Access movement advocates for public access to publicly funded research and has seen significant progress in recent years. More than one hundred open access publication mandates have been adopted by research funders, universities and departments worldwide for the research they support or produce, including the largest research funder in the world - the US National Institutes of Health.

In developing and transition countries, Open Access increases scientists' and academics' ability to both access and contribute to the global research community. The eIFL-Open Access Program, supported by OSI, works to raise awareness of open access, assist in the development of open repositories and advocate for open access mandates in over 45 developing and transition countries.


SPARC's Publisher Partners  This site also provides information on how publishers can work with libraries to move toward open-access publishing.