Ted Bergstrom's Homepage

Ted Bergstrom
Department of Economics
University of California Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9210
tedb@econ.ucsb.edu
(805) 893-3744   FAX (805) 893-8830

I am the occupant of the Aaron and Cherie Raznick Chair of  Economics
in the Economics Department
at the University of California Santa Barbara.
 

Journal Pricing and Journal Refereeing

A Lysistratan Scheme

Lysistrata:  "Ah, but those are the very sheet-anchors of our salvation--those yellow tunics,   those scents and slippers,those cosmetics and transparent robes."    Aristophanes

Every year, I am asked to referee many more journal articles than I have time to handle adequately.   University libraries complain that the rapid escalation of journal prices and the proliferation of new journals makes it impossible for them to maintain adequate collections of  books and journals within their budgets.

I just don't see why I should supply free refereeing services to those publishers that use monopoly pricing to gouge our university budgets.  I have made a new millenial resolution to stop refereeing papers for journals that charge library subscription rates greater than $1000 and to exercise preference for journals that charge less than $300. I do feel a professional obligation to review papers, but I can perform this obligation just as well by doing my refereeing for journals that arenot exploiting university libraries.

Here is a list of library subscription prices for a large selection of  economics journals  and here is a rogues' gallery of journals that cost libraries more than $1000 per year.

My new  policy leaves plenty of options, for example:  the new Journal of Public Economic Theory ($240 per year to libraries)or the AER, ($142 per year),  Econometrica ($178), the Canadian Journal ($120),  or  the Journal of Political Economy ($159). On the other hand, I will not be refereeing  for the Journal of Public Economics ($1431), Economic Letters($1492) or  Public Choice ($1000 per year).

It seems to me that the publishers that overprice their journals would  be up a creek if they lost the good will of the referees who provide them with free refereeing.  The gougers have lost mine, at least until they cut their prices.

I hope that many other scholars will take a similar view and will tell the editors and publishers of the overpriced journals about it.

More Information

Of course not all journals publish the same number of pages per year.  Here is a list of  economics journals ranked by price per page.  As you will see, although the journals costingmorethan $1000 per year typically have more pages than the average journal, theyremain among the most expensive in terms of price per page. The difference between prices per page charged by commercial publishers and those charged by university presses and professional societies is very striking. Here are
average  per page  prices by publisher.
Some journals charge submission fees to those who submit articles.  Here is a
 list of journals with submission fees.

If you are thinking about asking your library to cancel some overpriced journals and substitute cheaper, better ones, you will want to  know something about the number of times this journal is cited.  Here is a list of economics journals ranked by
price per recent citation

Here is An Excel spreadsheet with all of my data on journal prices, citations, and page lengths.

In case you want to suggest that your library drop some expensive journals and add some cheap ones,  I have made up two spreadsheets, one listing some overpriced journals in order of their cost per citation and one listing some reasonably priced journals
Click here for spreadsheets listing journals with high and low costs per citation
 

I  have  written a paper  on overpriced journals and how we might deal with them. This paper will  appear in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, later this year.
Free Labor for Costly Journals? (formatted for onscreen viewing)
PDF file (formatted for printing)

Carl Bergstrom and I have written a paper, intended for a general audience, on the economics of library purchases of electronic site licenses to academic journals.  Click here to see an abstract and access a pdf copy of this paper.
 

Would you believe that there are two economics journals that list their library subscription rates at more than $7500 per year but have almost no citations in recent years?  Would you believe that any libraries would subscribe to them?  Are you curious about which universities are sorichor so gullible that they subscribe to these journals?
Click here to find out.
 

Journal Pricing in  Other Disciplines

Here is a website where  Carl Bergstrom and I have assembled some information on journal pricing in
a number of disciplines.
 

The  Association of Research Libraries maintains the  SPARC website, a  useful source of information about journalpricing for science, technology, and medical journals.

The Association of Research Libraries sponsors an initiative called Create Change intended to "shift control of scholarly publicationsaway from commercial publishers and back to scholars.

Public Library of Science A large group of medical researchers and biologists have signed an open letterin which they request that all journals give all of their archivalmaterial to the public domain for distribution through online public libraries.

Scientific publishing: A research mathematician's viewpoint,  by Joan Birman
Comparative Prices of Math Journals (and what to do about it) by Rob Kirby
Update of Math Journal Prices by Rob Kirby
One More Revolution to Make: Free Scientific Publishing byKrzysztof Apt
(to appear in Communications of ACM, May 2001)
Journal pricing in atmospheric sciences

New,  Cheap Refereed Electronic Journals in Economics

Breakaway Journals

Pricing of Electronic Site Licenses

Do commercial publishers understand that electronic site licenses offer new possibilities for price discrimination and do they plan to do it?  You betcha!   Here is an excerpt from a recent speech by Derk Haank, CEO of Elsevier Science. 
``So, we should have models where we make a deal with the university, the consortia or the whole country, where we say for this amount we will allow all your people to use our material, unlimited, 24 hours per day. And, basically the price then depends on a rough estimate of how useful is that product for you; and we can adjust it over time. It is a principle, which, in my view, is not immoral. We want to distinguish between big universities vs. small universities, corporate vs. universities, and maybe rich countries vs. developing countries. There is nothing wrong in that and any combination of the three, as long as people pay something for it, because I don’t believe in giving it away for free.''
 Entire text of Mr. Haank's speech.
 

Ken Frazier,  head librarian at the University of Wisconsin, calls such consortium arrangements the ``Big Deal.''
In  Frazier's opinion:

"Academic library directors should not sign on to the Big Deal or any comprehensive licensing agreements with
  commercial publishers.
  You read that right. Don't buy the Big Deal. The University of Wisconsin Libraries and dozens of other research
  libraries also are holding out, convinced that the Big Deal serves only the Big Publishers. "
Entire text of  Mr. Frazier's article.

Carl Bergstrom and I have recently written a short paper that explores the theory of  site licenses for academic journals.
We argue that university site licenses serve no logistic purpose, but are solely a fiscal instrument. In the case of journals owned by profit-maximizing firms, these site licenses act as an instrument that allows publishers to price discriminate more sharply than they could if they were forced to sell journal access to individuals.  Consumers' surplus of the academic community would  be greater if libraries refused to purchase site licenses from publishes that set prices substantially above average cost.
Here is  a pdf copy of this paper.

And now for something completely different...

Courses

My Principles Textbook (with John Miller)

From My Desk Drawer

Economics Web Sites

        Economics Labs and Working Groups

        Websites for books on Economics

Publishing Technical Material in TeX

Other Disciplines

Evolutionary Biology

Other material

So Cal Theory Conference

The second annual Southern California Economic Theory Conference was held in Santa Barbara on March 3-5, 2000.   Click here for details.  The 2001 conference was at Cal Tech. The 2002conference will be at UC San Diego.

Ordering from on-line sources---Varsity Books, Buyer Beware!

A student messaged me about his unfortunate experience in ordering from varsity books,an online bookseller that has been advertising aggressively. They sent himthe old edition.  When he called them to tell them they sent himthe wrongbook, they refused to pay shipping and delivery for him to returnthe wrong book.   There is a lot to be said for dealing with your reliable and well-informed  local bookstores.

Click here  for an update on this student's experience with varsity books.