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It is never easy to forecast price rises for journal subscriptions with any accuracy. Some general points for considerations are listed below together with some links to websites that may prove useful. For more specific information libraries should contact their subscription agent directly.
One indicator to the likely rises in future years is past price rises. The links at the bottom of this page will take you to the figures for previous years.
These include wage inflation, investment in developing electronic journals and other publications, materials and other costs. Inflation is relatively low in Europe and the US, postal rates and paper prices are relatively stable at present, but investment in electronic journals continues at a high level.
For STM publishers the number of subscriptions to most established journals continues to decline. In Social Sciences and Humanities the position is generally fairly stable with some publishers reporting continuing growth in subscriptions. As the switch to electronic continues to gain pace the cancellation rate for paper journals increases, especially in STM sectors. Individual subscriptions to electronic journals are unlikely by themselves to compensate for the overall decline in the number of print subscriptions.
Consortia sales and bundled packages of electronic journals (Big Deals) have substantially increased the numberof titles available for access at many acadmic organisations. Such arrangements are normally priced by negotiaion or according to a variety of pricing models which may be based on organisation size or other parameters, which makes any predictions difficult in this area.
In past years, the most significant impact on journal price rises has often been currency fluctuations. These are impossible to predict with any certainty at all, though some indication of likely direction can be obtained from the ‘futures’ rates quoted by many financial organisations.
page last modified 08/06/03, © ASA