Transparency and Publisher Pricing Models

There is a perceived lack of transparency in publisher pricing models for databases and journal bundles, creating a sense of secrecy around important collection development decisions for online resources. This article traces some of the historical developments of this lack of transparency in the library marketplace and reports on a survey conducted exploring the amount of publicly available information on websites of database and journal bundle publishers. A discussion on how a lack of transparency can affect consortia, and perceived reasons why transparency in pricing can be seen as both beneficial and detrimental by librarians, will follow. It concludes with a short summary of what libraries can do to increase transparency for their libraries.