[Irtalk] Impact of Social Sciences – Secrets of journal subscription prices: For-profit publishers charge libraries two to three times more than non-profits.

[Hilton Gibson]

*Why are the commercial publishers so eager to conceal their prices from
the public view?* We suspect that part of the reason is that they do not
want scholars, librarians, and university administrators to know just how
high their prices are compared to  costs as measured by the prices of
non-profits. We also suspect that they do not want some universities to
 find out that they are paying much more than similar universities for the
same package.

*​But as things stand, we are getting the worst of both worlds*. The
university community is paying  a large  ransom to monopolistic
 publishers, but is still not getting full access to the output that its
own scholars produce and evaluate without pay.

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/08/12/secrets-of-the-big-deal-journal-pricing/
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