Price and Value of Electronic Journals: A Survey at the Indian Institute of Science

This article analyzes the most used scholarly electronic journals at a multi-disciplinary research institute in India, the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). Analysis of the top thirty journals at IISc shows that two-thirds of these journals be long to non-profit/society publishers and one-third to for-profit/commercial publishers. There is a remarkable difference between the prices that for-profit/commercial publishers charge libraries for scholarly journals and the prices that non-profit/society publishers and university presses charge. This price difference does not appear to reflect a difference in quality as measured by the number of recorded citations to a journal/impact factor and use of journal.