On 3-Sep-09, at 5:51 PM, Ian Russell wrote: > > > Except your starting assumption is incorrect. The "uncontrolled > > inflationary spiral" is a myth. Price-per-page and > > price-per-article are falling and continue to do so. > > >
Price-per-journal is indeed a good indicator if you have to balance the library budget - you don't have the choice but to subscribe to the whole journal! I agree though that price-per-article is a better indicator if one try to ascertain if subscriptions price increases are reasonable - or justified. I would like to know where you found the information about a decreasing price-per-article. Using publicly available data (in the form of the Excel file downloadable from Ted Bergstrom's Journal Pricing Page, http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/Journals/jpricing.html), I obtained a 31% average increase from 2004 to 2008 for the price-per-article (based upon the 4500 journals listed for both years). By comparison, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) increase from 2004 to 2008 was 13% in the US (and 9% in Canada). There are however huge differences between individual journal price-per-article variations. In fact, in the same four-year period, the price-per-article actually decreased in a third of the journals, while increasing more than the US CPI in half (and more than 50% in one-fifth). Marc Couture Professor UER Science et Technologie Télé-université (Université du Québec à Montréal)
