An economic "Commons'" tragedy for research libraries: Scholarly journal publishing and pricing trends

The recent dramatic increases in both the numbers and prices of scholarly journals are evidence of a distorted economic marketplace for scholarly information. They can also be mewed as evidence of an impending economic "commons" tragedy for this nation's research libraries. The general economic principles underlying this tragedy were popularized in a nontechnical and very influential 1968 essay by Garrett Hardin called' "The Tragedy of the Commons. "The strategies needed to manage our research library commons effectively will require a fundamental reshaping of the present system of scholarly communication. The leadership for making the necessary changes must come from the research library community.