Subs That Cost More Than Your Mortgage …

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, July, 2001 by Joe Hagan

In his standup days, Steve Martin imagined how much money he could earn if he filled a 3,000-seat concert hall and charged $800 a ticket. "That's what I'm shooting for," he said in a mock-devious tone. "One show--good-bye!"

Well, this business model, not so wild and crazy after all, works wonders for some publishers of extremely arcane information. Take Elsevier Science Inc., which publishes Brain Research. With about 1,000 institutional subscribers, the journal costs $17,444 a year for 64 issues plus some print and Web supplements. Expensive, yes, but there are precious few places a budding neurosurgeon can go for the latest insider gab. In fact, the subscription price of the top-10 leading scholarly journals averages $8,000, according to research by the Association of Research Libraries. Here are some other journals working on the Martinian model.

TITLE                                 PUBLISHER     FREQUENCY
Nuclear Physics                       Elsevier      84 issues/yr
                                      Science Inc.
Hydrobiologia                         Kluwer        25 issues/yr
Journal of Applied Polymer Science    Wiley         56 issues/yr
Journal of Crystal Growth             Elsevier      52 issues/yr
                                      Science Inc.
American Journal of Medical Genetics  Wiley         40 issues/yr
TITLE                                 YEARLY SUB *
Nuclear Physics                       $12,598
Hydrobiologia                          $7,216
Journal of Applied Polymer Science    $12,495
Journal of Crystal Growth              $8,657
American Journal of Medical Genetics   $7,395
TITLE                                 RECENT ARTICLE
Nuclear Physics                       A phenomenological study
                                       of heavy-quark fragmentation
                                       functions in e+e- annihilation
Hydrobiologia                         Phytoplankton of Estonian
                                       rivers in midsummer
Journal of Applied Polymer Science    NR-EPDM conulcanization: A
                                       novel approach
Journal of Crystal Growth             Insensitivity of self-formed
                                       quantum dots to substrate
                                       surface roughness
American Journal of Medical Genetics  A family study of Tourette's
                                       syndrome in Japan
(*)INSTITUTIONAL PRICE, MAY INCLUDE
WEB ACCESS AND VARIOUS SUPPLEMENTS.