PrepTest 136, Section 4, Question 8
A significant amount of the acquisition budget of(64 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(7 more words not shown)
- AMany university libraries(26 more words not shown)
- BA university library's(13 more words not shown)
- CPublishing a scholarly(18 more words not shown)
- DMost subscribers to(21 more words not shown)
- EThe majority of(11 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Higher prices and steady costs sound like a recipe for higher profits. But are we seeing the whole picture?
Libraries are paying much more for subscriptions, while publishing costs have stayed fairly constant. My first question is whether some other expense could eat up the extra money. We cannot simply invent an increase in the publishing costs the passage tells us stayed steady. But an expense outside those stated costs, if there were one, could matter.
What we’re looking for
We need to weaken the claim that publishing journals must now be much more profitable in most cases. I'd initially look for something preventing the higher payments from turning into substantially higher profit. Let's see whether the answers identify a cost or some other weakness in the financial picture.
Working the answers
- A
Higher overdue fines are a way for libraries to cope with their costs. The conclusion concerns the publishers' profits. Where the libraries get the money they pay publishers does not show that publishing journals has become less profitable or failed to become much more profitable.
- B
We do not need to know what fraction of a library's entire budget goes to acquisitions. That is a fact about the customer's spending priorities, not about the publisher's revenue and expenses. A small share of the library's budget could still represent a large payment to a journal.
- C
Publishing can be expensive and still become much more profitable. Likewise, needing to avoid persistent losses tells us something about financial survival, not whether profits have increased over the last several years. C supplies no change that challenges the conclusion.
- DCorrect
This takes a different route from the extra-cost prediction. Most customers are individuals, and their subscription rates have generally stayed the same. The dramatic increase applies to libraries, so we cannot casually treat it as a dramatic increase across the whole customer base.
For example, imagine 100 subscribers initially paying the same price: one library and 99 individuals. Tripling the library's price would change total subscription revenue from 100 price-units to 102, not to 300. That is a hypothetical illustration, not a calculation the passage establishes. Individual and library prices could differ. The point is that a large increase for one customer group need not produce a comparably large increase overall.
- E
Publishing frequency alone tells us neither how revenues have changed nor how expenses compare with them. A journal could publish four issues a year and become more profitable, less profitable, or stay about the same. E gives us no reason to doubt the claimed change.
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