RE: Price discrimination for academic subscriptions (discussion)

["Hamaker, Chuck" <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>]

The current journals system genrally forces smaller research
establishments, or individual faculty needs to have higher per use costs
than the larger institutions with many faculty in the same area.

A faculty member in oceanography at a small institution needs access to
the same core literatures as a faculty member at a large dedicated
facility.  A few individuals in a research area at an institution will
have much much higher per use costs than individuals where there are
larger numbers of faculty in the area.

We've experienced this quite clearly at UNC Charlotte.

This is common sense, but is an area publishers and libraries have
generally ignored, though the attempts at sliding scales by FTE's are a
very crude attempt. They don't really address the issue of quality support
for research at institutions without major programs that still need the
same core literatures as larger programs.

Chuck Hamaker