Trends in scientific scholarly journal publishing in the United States

Scientific scholarly publishing has experienced dramatic economic change over the past few decades. Unfortunately, there has been little documentation concerning details of such change, other than reported price increases. In mid-1995 the University of Tennessee School of Information Sciences/Center for Information Studies was awarded the Special Libraries Association Steven I. Goldspiel Memorial Research Grant. The purpose of this grant is to produce relevant data and: information to examine the scholarly journal publishing system in order to better understand what has happened and to help authors, publishers, librarians, readers, and library funders avoid mistakes of the past when dealing with emerging electronic journals and article distribution. This paper describes current scientific journal publishing in the United States, trends over I:he past twenty years, and data that help explain the price and demand relationship involving individual and institutional subscriptions.