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For Profit Academic Publishers Have 40% Profit Margin

September 14, 2015

The Library shares information on the rising costs of providing access to scholarly resources.

All information is not equal. ANYONE can be an information producer, as a matter of fact, we ALL are whenever we Tweet or post something on Facebook.  Data and discussion can be found on the internet to support any viewpoint, no matter how inaccurate or far-fetched that information may be. 

Enter resources that cost money. We generally pay for them because they contain more reliable information than we could get elsewhere without paying for it. This goes doubly so for peer-reviewed journals, wherein authoritative articles have been written and “vetted” (peer reviewed)  by other experts. Unfortunately, that information does not come cheap. As the linked article demonstrates, the publishers of scholarly journals have profit margins of nearly forty percent. Consequently, the inflated pricing severely impacts the resources that Libraries can afford to provide access to students and faculty.