SPARC/ACRL Forum

And Then There Was One: Industry Consolidation in Journal Publishing and What It Means for Libraries
Saturday, January 25, 2003

The current round of corporate acquisitions in the profitable STM journal publishing industry appears to be concentrating enormous market power in a few hands. What is the impact of this industry consolidation on journal subscribers? On competition? On access to information? What government scrutiny do these deals receive? Should libraries be concerned? What can they do about it? These issues were examined by three speakers who are concerned by the trend:

• Journal Pricing and Mergers: Print v Digital, Mark J. McCabe, Assistant Professor,School of Economics, Georgia Institute of Technology<

• The Economics of Scholarly Journal Publishing, Theodore T. Bergstrom, Aaron and Cherie Raznick Chair of Economics, Economics Department, University of California Santa Barbara<

• What's a Library to Do?, Mary M. Case, Director, Office of Scholarly Communication, Association of Research Libraries

At the conclusion of the program, Sarah Thomas of Cornell University Libraries updated the audience on the launch of Project Euclid. Project Euclid is Cornell's new publishing platform for independent math and statistics journals.