Journal costs drain University budget

Higher education is selling its most valuable commodity -- ideas printed in academic journals -- at way too high a price, University President Graham Spanier told the University Faculty Senate Tuesday.

The cost of purchasing academic journals continues to push through the roof, he said, and University libraries will have to spend $633,000 this year in order to maintain last year's purchasing level.

When American academics sell their work to journals, which are increasingly published by European companies, they allow the cycle of price inflation to continue, Spanier said.

"I've gotten to the point where I want to open up the window and say 'we're not going to take it anymore,' " Spanier said.

As members of the audience shouted out in agreement, one voice told Spanier of a journal costing $35,000 a year.

"In some of the fields that are very important to Penn State, we are paying $2, 5, 10 thousand for one subscription to a journal," Spanier said.

This incredible price inflation poses a real problem for both graduate and undergraduate students, Faculty Senate Chairman Louis Geschwindner said. If a class intends to keep on top of a field, it must rely on journals, because textbooks do not carry the latest developments, he said.

"Some of these rules and regulations seem to have gotten out of hand," Geschwindner said, referring to practices by some publishing companies forbidding individuals to purchase journals if the organization they work for does not already pay for the product at a higher institutional rate.

This is a prime example of students losing out, said Tim Creyts, a member of the Undergraduate Student Government Academic Assembly.

"It's a lot of money coming straight out of tuition," said Creyts (senior-geosciences), referring to journal costs.

He said students need to E-mail their professors and urge them to pressure professional organizations to publish electronically. Creyts said he would also like to see USG lobby for lower prices.

If professional organizations looked for alternative means to publishing articles, library costs would drop, Spanier said.

"We do not need to send millions of our budget dollars to Europe," he added.

Some solutions would be to bring journals back to American associations, improve inter-library loan programs, increase usage of University presses and post articles on the Internet, according to the senate committee report Spanier spoke about.