Carl T Bergstrom and Theodore C Bergstrom, The Economics of Ecology Journals, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, November 2006. (Thanks to Katie Newman and George Porter.) Only this abstract is free online, at least so far.
Over the past decade, scientific publishing has shifted from a paper-based distribution system to one largely built upon electronic access to journal articles. Despite this shift, the basic patterns of journal pricing have remained largely unchanged. The large commercial publishers charge dramatically higher prices to institutions than do professional societies and university presses. These price differences do not reflect differences in quality as measured by citation rate. We discuss the effect of price and citation rate of a journal on library subscriptions and offer an explanation for why competition has not been able to erode the price differences between commercial and non-profit journals.
Update. See the OA edition of this article. (Thanks to William Walsh.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/17/2006 08:43:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
