By the Numbers

Serials
Monographs
ARL Statistics
Report on Serials Subscriptions and Pricing
Report on Mongraph Pricing

• Serials unit costs From 1986 to 2004 serials unit costs have increased 188% while the Consumer Price Index, a commonly used measure of inflation, has increased 73%.


• Rampant serials inflation This graph illustrates the skyrocketing increase in serials expenditures and the relatively slow increase in monograph expenditures for NCSU Libraries. This exorbitant increase has also occurred for the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) as a whole for 1986-2006, as shown below.






• Disproportionate share of budget Serials account for approximately two-thirds of the collections budget of NCSU Libraries, as illustrated in the figure below.


• Serials vs. monographs From fiscal years 1995/1996 to 2004/2005, NCSU Libraries' serials expenditures went from $2.7 million to $5.9 million while monographs expenditures went from $1.74 million to $1.73 million. This graph shows the increase in serials expenditures as a percentage of total expenditures over a ten year period.




The materials budget has levelled off in recent years which makes it difficult to maintain serials subscriptions in the face of high inflation.



• Serials Reviews Persistent inflation has resulted in the need for Serials Reviews, most recently in 2006 and also in 2005 and 2002.

Monograph inflation during this same period of time has been more in line with the consumer price index. While the Libraries' budget has increased nearly 50% the amount spent on monographs has shown no discernible increase. Cuts in monograph expenditures are typically enacted to pay for serials inflation. Nearly all of the budget increase over this ten year period has been used to pay for serials.

ARL Statistics (interactive edition) provides journal and monograph data submitted by ARL member institutions. It can be used to generate rankings, graphs and summary statistics. ARL Statistics 2004-2005, is the latest of an annual series which describes collections and expenditures of ARL members.

EBSCO Information Services reports on journal price increases for academic and other libraries over the years 2000-2004. For ARL Libraries Journal prices from 2001 to 2005 have increased nearly 40%. Non-U.S. titles make up 35.3% of the total titles but 57% of the total expenditure.

Library Journal produces Periodical Prices Survey annually which documents journal inflation in various subject areas, cost history and cost projections. Among scientific disciplines Chemistry has the highest average price per title at $3,254 followed by Physics ($2850) and Engineering ($1756) while Agriculture was lowest at $890.

Trends in Scholarly Journal Prices 2000-2006 is a report from Loughborough University which studied overall price, price per page, and price per point of impact factor for more than 8,000 journals from 8 commercial publishers and 3 university presses. The study examined trends in prices of biomedical and social science journals. The report found "little consistent evidence of associations between price, impact factor and number of pages."