Why are scholarly journals costly even with electronic publishing?

Purpose - This paper aims to examine the reasons for the high costs of scholarly journals. Design/methodology/approach - A brief review of the literature on journal publishing costs is carried out. The paper focuses on the economics of scholarly English language journals published mainly in the USA and Europe, but which are sold worldwide, largely to academic and research libraries. Findings - Journal literature has long played a prominent role in the scholarly communication chain. In recent decades, however, the scholarly communication system has been facing a crisis due to the ever-escalating costs of journals. Two of the features of the journal publishing industry cited a decade ago and still valid today are a lack of competition and perverse incentives. "First-copy cost" is reported to be the main reason for high journal prices both in print and electronic publishing. Originality/value - The paper provides a useful overview to researchers and document supply librarians, enabling them to achieve quickly a clear picture of journal publishing industry costs.