A contemporary discussion of some of the causes of serial price increases is provided by Farrell ( 1). Naturally, publishing more costs more, and this was especially true in the print environment of the early 1990s. In some cases, bi-annual journals became quarterlies, and quarterlies became monthlies – all to accommodate the increase in the number of research articles being submitted for publication. First, as the baby-boomer generation reached the age where many were finishing their PhDs and entering tenure track, journals began to publish more articles to accommodate the increase in the amount of research the boomers were carrying out. The subscription prices increased in North America for several reasons. They were pressured to cancel journals because subscription prices had gone up and library budgets had decreased. In the 1980s and 1990s, many academic libraries in North America carried out journal subscription cancellation projects. A few low-quality scholarly publishers existed, but generally, researchers were aware of them and knew to avoid them. At that time, most journals were generally respected and of good quality, and peer review was taken seriously and managed well. Setting the stage for predatory publishingīefore the internet began to play a role in scholarly publishing, that is, prior to about 1998, when the World Wide Web became ubiquitous, almost all scholarly journals were print-based, subscription journals.
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