Quote:
Originally Posted by tony873004
Rather, why they charge as much as they charge, and whether they make any sales at $30 an article? Professionals are likely to have subscriptions at their institutions.
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I don't know, but I suspect that it is professionals that are paying $30/article. The company I work for subscribes to maybe half a dozen journals at most that are related to our business. But, there can be several dozen more that have occassional articles of interest. And more often that not, an article I might suddenly be interested in (new project for example) might be several or many years old.
So, unless the article happens to be in a journal we have, and we kept it, the company will use that service and go purchase the article. I don't care, the company pays for it. And it is probably cheaper for the company than saving years and years of multiple journals on the chance that someone will need some article. Plus, since I work in R&D, it gets written off as a research expense.
Pre-internet days, there were companies out there that would do the exact same thing for you - find a University that had the journal, pay them to make a copy, and mail the copy to you. And if I remember correctly, the charge was about $25 or $30 per article. So, in constant dollars, it actually is cheaper now.
Now, my current employer is relatively well off. I used to work for a small company. If I wanted an article, I went to the library and copied it. Every six months or so I would expense $25 or $50 in quarters and make an expedition of stuff I was interested in.
One last thing - part of the fee you pay goes to cover the copyright fee (I don't know how much that is).