(+) Are Genealogy Journals Too Expensive?

The following is a Plus Edition article, written by and copyright by Dick Eastman.

A recent news article made me stop to think. Harvard University recently sent a memo to faculty saying, "We write to communicate an untenable situation facing the Harvard Library. Many large journal publishers have made the scholarly communication environment fiscally unsustainable and academically restrictive. This situation is exacerbated by efforts of certain publishers (called "providers") to acquire, bundle, and increase the pricing on journals."

The entire Faculty Advisory Council Memorandum on Journal Pricing is available at http://goo.gl/kn2vf.

Obviously, Harvard is writing about academic journals. However, I have to wonder if the same issues apply to genealogy journals that are also published in an academic manner and written to academic standards. Such journals would include the National Genealogical Society Quarterly (NGSQ), The American Genealogist (TAG), The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, and The Virginia Genealogist.

These journals publish articles of the highest academic standards. Ideally, the circulation of each of these magazines should be increased to better serve the genealogy community. Each such journal solves genealogy puzzles and, even better, serves as an example of proper genealogy research for others to emulate. Ideally, I'd love to see every beginning genealogist subscribe to one or more of these academic journals, but that isn't always practical since such subscriptions are usually part of a rather pricy membership.

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