ABSTRACT
The scholarly journal publisher publishes exclusively for the librarian, the librarian has no other access to the information that he needs for the service to his constituency but through the publisher’s product. Publishers are aware of the high priority that librarians have set for collecting their own national scholarly book and journal production. Branches, independent companies, and joint ventures were established by the larger publishers, while smaller publishers set up sole distributorships and agency arrangements. The usual argument presented to support these changes was that international representation is a must, and that it is a necessary gesture to please American editors and authors. It is truly amazing that the international publishers who chose to use that method of differential pricing would take the risk of destroying the credibility of their pricing policies when they eliminated the world price for their journals and adopted a policy of varying prices depending on the location and the country of the subscribing institution.
