Why are Journals so expensive???

[naughtoj]

I was looking online at different medical journals (I love reading that stuff), like "Cardiopulmonary Medicine Today" or "American Journal of Rehab Science"....you get the picture. Anyhoo.........there are some, like "Exercise and Science in Medicine" that go over $300.00/yr for a subscription, only giving you 6 journals or so!!!!


Just wondering.........why are these things so costly?? Anyone get them? R they worth it? I put in for a few "trial" issues of the cheaper ones. They would have to be super good to even be worth 50 bucks in my opinion......LOL

 

[Bunbun]

With a few exceptions, most medical journals are highly specialized and aimed at a very particular audience. Medical libraries and institutions and pharma companies often subscribe, and physicians will subscribe to the main journal(s) of their specialty. Otherwise, most of these journals stay in business by charging exorbitant fees for a subscription, plus charging lots of $$ to order reprints of individual articles or for the right to reprint a chart from an article. Either that or the journal is funded by annual dues from from phyisican specialty organization.

Can't say if it would be worth it to you to spend the money on those particular journals--I'm not familiar with them. Sounds like you're already doing what I was going to suggest--got to the journal web sites and read the table of contents and (if they're available) the free abstracts of the articles in the journals each month. It should give you an idea of the type of things they publish and the level of detail and science in the articles. Trial issues are great, too.

One journal I used to actually like to read was The Physician and Sportsmedicine, but I haven't read it in years now.

 

[tina72382]

Janice, you might want to try a local library or college library. Often, you can request those journals and they may be able to order them. You might only be able to read them in the library, but you could copy them to bring home. It would be cheaper that way! - Tina

 

[Miss Lee]

Have you tried online journals---something like Pub Med?

Michele

 

[Connie1]

They don't collect money from advertisers.