What made you go WTF today?

[RandBlade]

And their business model boils down to selling subscriptions to universities.

If they had $90 per subscription or $5 per article then a lot of universities might cancel their subscriptions and consider getting just the articles they need. They'd need to sell a lot of articles to make up any lost subscriptions. Their model basically says that for just over the price of just 2 articles you can get an annual subscription.

[wiggin]

And their business model boils down to selling subscriptions to universities.

If they had $90 per subscription or $5 per article then a lot of universities might cancel their subscriptions and consider getting just the articles they need. They'd need to sell a lot of articles to make up any lost subscriptions. Their model basically says that for just over the price of just 2 articles you can get an annual subscription.

That's not really how university subscriptions work, that's how personal subscriptions work. Institutions are far more complex in how the pricing is set - mostly you buy large chunks of journal families at a huge upfront cost.

[RandBlade]

That's not really how university subscriptions work, that's how personal subscriptions work. Institutions are far more complex in how the pricing is set - mostly you buy large chunks of journal families at a huge upfront cost.

I understand that but key remains to be in the subscription business. Not to be selling per-article with a subscription optional.

Heck if they're in a package it makes it even more important to be 'valuable' per article. By rating each article at $40 each (even if they never sell one) then the package the uni buys collectively has $000s worth of articles. "For the low price of just $500 per year our package of high quality journals has over $10,000 worth of premium education articles".

They're charging 40 as they're simply not trying to sell direct articles.