From: "Bosch, Stephen J - (boschs)" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 16:41:58 +0000

This discussion does raise some good points about serials pricing and
the fact that bundles have had an impact on pricing models. But this
does not mean that it is impossible to use existing data to develop
views of current serials pricing data that can paint an accurate
picture of the scholarly serials market place.

ALA ALCTS does continue to publish the serials price index. You can
find the most current versions in the Library and Book Trade Almanac
published by Information Today - the last volume came out last June.
Earlier versions of the data can be found on the ALCTS web site
http://www.ala.org/alcts/resources/collect/serials/spi

One table in that article  looks at the retail price of serials as
supplied by publishers (there is pricing for print or online depending
on what's available from the publishers) for over 10,400 titles
commonly used in academic libraries. The average price of those
journals was a little over $1,300 per title. The overall value for
that set of titles was slightly over $14,000,000.

Also Library Journal publishes an annual article on serials pricing.
http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2014/04/publishing/steps-down-the-evolutionary-road-periodicals-price-survey-2014/#_

There are several tables that look at average prices in several
different scenarios. The Average price of titles indexed in the Web of
Knowledge is $1,458 per title in 2014. Table 3 looks at online pricing
for titles in the Web of Knowledge.

Yes, the shift to online and bundles has made the job of following
serials prices more difficult but it is not impossible.

Disclaimer: I am an author of both the studies mentioned above.

Stephen  Bosch
Materials Budget, Procurement, and Licensing Librarian
University of Arizona Library
Tucson, AZ 85721-0055
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-----Original Message-----
From: Sally Morris <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 14:01:48 +0000

The difficulty of reaching a definitive answer is, presumably, exactly
why the ALA stopped maintaining its index of journal prices

Sally

Sally Morris
Email:  [log in to unmask]