A further annoyance on the cost of scholarly journals is this. To the best of my knowledge the only party that obtains any payement for journal articles is the paper publisher. The article authors do not and the institution(s) that support(s) the research are actually asked to pay towards the cost of publishing. Yet the journal publishers not only charge outrageous costs for subscriptions but they may want fees as high as $25 for online viewing of the full text of 4 or 5 page article.
Further the journal publisher may often copyright in their own name graphs and figures in the article making it difficult to assemble teaching materials without extensive correpondence. I find this especially distressing in relation to research that is funded by the public through the National Science Foundation but published by journals owned by publishers such as Elsiver. If my tax dollars paid for the research and the drafting of the figures why should Elsiver own them?
If you are a scholar who is no longer associated with a university it becomes very difficult to keep up to date on some topics.
