The term serials crisis has become common shorthand for the runaway cost increases of many scholarly journals^[1] . The crisis is a result of the cost rising much faster than the rate of inflation^[2]; the cost per journal and the number of such journals proliferates, while the funds available to the libraries remains stationary in real terms. This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

The cost of scientific journal is increasing faster than the inflation rate. There are many factors; Among them are: In economics, the inflation rate is the rate of increase of the average price level (a measure of inflation). ...

• Each journal title is a unique commodity and cannot be replaced in a library collection by another less expensive journal on the same subject as one could with many other products. The publisher thus acts as a monopolist.
• In general the cost of academic facilities and services increases faster than the inflation rate.
• As libraries cancel journal subscriptions, many of the fixed costs remain the same and must be paid by the remaining subscribers.
• Currency Exchange rates can serve to increase the unpredictability of serial prices. For example, many of the publishers of scientific journals are in Europe and as the United States dollar has weakened in relation to the currencies of Europe, the prices of journals to US libraries has increased disproportionately. When the United States dollar is strengthening, the prices of journals elsewhere increases disproportionately.
• The increasing domination of scholarly communication by commercial publishers, whose journals are more costly than those of academic societies^[3].
• The increasing concentration of commercial publishing from the continuing merger of commercial publishers.

Due to: This article is about economic monopoly. ... World map showing the location of Europe. ... ISO 4217 Code USD User(s) the United States, the British Indian Ocean Territory,[1] the British Virgin Islands, East Timor, Ecuador, El Salvador, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau, Panama, Turks and Caicos Islands, and the insular areas of the United States Inflation 2. ... Gefen Publishing House, is dedicated to producing a broad range of quality titles relating to Judaism, Jewish thought, and Israel, including history, the Holocaust, art, childrens books, philosophy, science, biographies, and more. ...

• the publish or perish practices of academic institutions, now increasingly found not only in universities, but in non-research colleges and junior colleges,
• the explosion in the number of academic subfields,
• the advance of research and higher education in other than the traditional countries,
• the increase in many countries of people with higher academic degrees
• the increasing complexity of technology

At the same time, libraries have seen collections budgets decline in real terms compared to the United States Periodical Price index. As well as other library expenditures such as computers and networking equipment. The competition for tenure-track faculty positions and for tenure itself for professors holding such positions brought on by the tight job market in academia, especially in the humanities and social sciences, has increased on scholars to publish, as publishing has become the all-important measure of a scholars... Contents   Overviews   Academia   Topics   Basic topics   Glossaries   Portals   Categories // This is a list of academic disciplines. ... Julio Pérez Ferrero Library - Cúcuta, Colombia A modern-style library in Chambéry A library is a collection of information, sources, resources and services, organized for use, and maintained by a public body, an institution, or a private individual. ...

Solutions, alternatives and developments

To contain costs, while maintaining access to the latest scholarly research for their users, libraries are

• increasingly borrowing journals from one another (see interlibrary loan)
• purchasing single articles from commercial document suppliers (instead of subscribing to whole journals)
• canceling subscriptions to the least used or least cost-effective journals
• switching from printed to electronic copies of journals (except when the publisher charges more for the electronic edition)
• joining in co-operative consortial purchase arrangements for journals,
• engaging in collaborative ventures to bringing together a few titles and publishers to create lower-cost online journals with reasonable subscription terms,
• encouraging various schemes for obtaining free access to journals
• supporting journals that use other publishing models, such as
  • open access journals where the reader of a journal or the library at their institution does not need to pay a subscription or pay per view charge to read the articles published in that journal. This free access is achieved through a number of basic models. First, is the publication fee model in which a funding agency, university, or the author(s) of an article pays a publication fee per article to ensure that it will be available to readers free of charge. Sometimes these journals will waive the publication fee if the author cannot pay. Second, some open access journals receive institutional subsidies or are grant funded so as to make it unnecessary for the journal to charge publication or subscription fees.
  • hybrid open access journals are traditional subscription based journals that permit authors to pay a fee to make their article available free of charge to the reader. This gives the author the advantages of open access to their published research but subscribers continue to pay subscription fees for such journals to gain access to the non-free content. This model has been adopted by many of the commercial publishers and large scholarly societies. It has to potential to increase revenues for the publisher, while at the same time subjecting libraries to continuing price inflation. This model doesn't serve to end the serials crisis -- unless the subscription price for a hybrid journal should decline in some fashion related to the proportion of the journal that has become open access. Oxford University Press announced on July 25th, 2007 price reductions for 2008 calendar year online-only subcriptions for its "Oxford Open Journals"^[4], however, in many cases these subscription prices still higer than 2007 calendar year subscriptions^[5]. The price reductions are reduction compared with the price Oxford University Press would have charged in the absence of Open Access content. Springer Verlag has outlined its intention to develop pricing based on changes in the proportion of Open Choice (TM) articles as compared to the subscription model artilces, ^[6] Hypothetically, this model could serve as an intermediary step in evolution to a widescale adoption open access journal model.
  • delayed open access journals, are traditional subscription based journals that provide open access after an embargo period from the initial publication date. A subscription or an article purchase would be required to read the materials before this this embargo period ends. These journals may additionally deposit there publications in open repositories. Many scholarly society journals have adopted this model. While this model increases access to scholarly research literature for many, libraries that continue subscriptions end up paying for access to a rolling file of the most recent material of the embargo period.
• exploring other mechanisms for the publication of research.

Interlibrary loan (abbreviated ILL and in some countries called interloan, document delivery, or document supply etc) is a service whereby a user of one library can borrow books, videos, DVDs, sound recordings, microfilms, or receive photocopies of articles in magazines that are owned by another library. ... Open access (OA) means immediate, free and unrestricted online access to digital scholarly material[1], primarily peer-reviewed research articles in scholarly journals. ... Open access (OA) is the free online availability of digital content. ... A newly popular variation on open access journals is the Hybrid Open Access Journal. ... Delayed open access is a form of open access journal in which the free availability of the content is delayed for several month, with the immediate availability being limited to subscribers. ... In academic publishing, an embargo is a period during which access is not allowed to certain types of users. ... In academic publishing, an embargo is a period during which access is not allowed to certain types of users. ...

See also

Library and information science open access Library and information science (LIS) is the study of issues related to libraries and the information fields. ... Open access (OA) means immediate, free and unrestricted online access to digital scholarly material[1], primarily peer-reviewed research articles in scholarly journals. ...

External links

• Open Access Overview Peter Suber
• The Post-Gutenberg Galaxy: How to Get There from Here Stevan Harnad
• Electronic Journals and Scholarly Communication: A Citation and Reference StudyStephen P. Harter and Hak Joon Kim
• Electronic Publishing in Science International Council of Scientific Unions/UNESCO
• New Horizons in Scholarly Communication Librarians Association of the University of California
• Tragic Loss or Good Riddance? The Impending Demise of Traditional Scholarly Journals Andrew M. Odlyzko
• The Library 'Doomsday Machine' Anne Okerson and Kendon Stubbs
• The Crisis in Scholarly Publishing University of Waterloo (Canada) Scholarly Societies Project
• Bridging the Gap Between Traditional and Electronic Scholarly Publishing Jerry Willis
• The Serials Crisis A White Paper for the UNC-Chapel Hill Scholarly Communications Convocation, Judith M. Panitch and Sarah Michalak, January, 2005
• U.S Periodical Prices -2005 American Library Association