Think consolidation of the publishing industry won’t affect what you read? “Science and technical journals have become a case study in the publishing industry’s growing consolidation. Until the 1960’s, scores of smaller companies and nonprofit organizations published the vast majority of journals. Since then, a handful of companies led by Reed Elsevier have acquired the bulk of them and have aggressively raised subscription prices. The average price of a subscription to a scholarly journal has more than tripled in the last 14 years. To keep up, libraries now buy fewer new books than they did a decade ago, diminishing the market for books of all kinds and frustrating professors desperate to publish.” – New York Times