By now, it is public knowledge that subscription prices for scholarly journals have been rising beyond inflation for decades (i.e., the serials crisis): A superficially very similar graph was recently published for APC price increases: When not paying too much attention, both figures seem to indicate a linear increase in costs over time for both business models. However, the situation is more complicated than that.

Time and time again, academic publishers have managed to create the impression that publishing incurs a lot of costs which justify the outrageous prices they charge, be that US$11M p.a. for an Elsevier Big Deal subscription or an article processing charge (APC) of US$5,200 for a Nature Communications article.

There is an interesting study out in the journal PNAS: “Evaluating big deal journal bundles“. The study details the disparity in negotiation skills between different US institutions when haggling with publishers about subscription pricing.

This post is both a follow up to last week’s post on the cost’s of peer review and a response to Duncan Hull‘s post of nine or so months ago proposing a game of “Fantasy Science Funding“. The game requires you to describe how you would distribute the funding of the BBSRC if you were a benign (or not so benign) dictator. The post and the discussion should be read bearing in mind my standard disclaimer. Peer review is in crisis.