Friends: Here is one reason why we need to promote open access WORLDWIDE. Escalating prices of journals have led to cancellations of subscriptions even in affluent libraries. But physicists are by and large not affected because many of them adopted open access about 15 years ago! Arun ----

From Peter Suber's blog of 31 October 2005

More on the pricing crisis Anna Norman, Cost of scientific journals 'staggering', The Daily (newspaper of the University of Washington at Seattle), October 31, 2005. Excerpt: Every quarter, students wonder how to pay for expensive textbooks. The rising costs of scientific and scholarly journals is creating the same problem for the UW libraries, said Timothy Jewell, head of Collection Management Services, which manages research databases and scholarly journals...."The prices of [the journals] are just staggering," said UW President Mark Emmert. "If you went down a list of some of these major journals, you would see series with four issues a year for over $8,000."...Jewell cited publisher consolidation as the primary reason for soaring prices. "A lot of the smaller publishers have been bought out by large, multinational corporations," he said. "The largest scientific, technical and health journal publisher, Elsevier, has been overtaking publishers for the last 10 years or so." With fewer companies dominating the market, journal prices have risen exponentially Despite an estimated 7 to 8 percent increase each year aimed at journal costs, the libraries' budget isn't keeping up with escalating expenses, Jewell said. "In years that we can't find the necessary funding to pay, we have to cancel our subscriptions to stay in budget," he said....Although the library staff has increased funding, there is no end to cancellations in sight, said Mel DeSart, head of the Engineering Library. "I've only been here for five and a half years, and I've already been through two cancellations," he said. "They are substantial cuts - we've cut thousands of titles over the last ten years."...Without major changes in the academic publishing market, Jewell said he isn't sure where the libraries will be a few years from now.