> In April 2012, the Harvard Library published a letter stating that their subscriptions to academic journals were “financially untenable.” Due to price increas

> In April 2012, the Harvard Library published a letter stating that their subscriptions to academic journals were “financially untenable.” Due to price increases as high as 145% over the past 6 years, the library said that it would soon be forced to cut back on subscriptions. Now think what happens in countries not that rich as USA. Worse, this is a self-sustaining process. A friend of mine is doing PhD and the university rules are "collect points of vanish". One collects points for publishing in journals: ~10 for minor/local journal, ~20 for known one and ~30-40 for major worldwide-famous journal. If you don't have enough points, i.e. not enough publications or not enough prestigious, they throw you off (the fact that this additionally gives incentives to publish-often instead publish-well is yet another story).