Cost of Canadian Legal Journals

The Canadian Association of Law Libraries has just released its Serials Tracking Report for 2004. The report tracked 230 print titles in a variety of legal areas (from administrative law to torts)

Among the highlights:

• the average price increase between 2003 and 2004 was 9.5%, two and half times greater than the 2002-03 price increase
• this average price increase was 6 times the consumer price index
• there were considerable differences between publishers, with Canada Law Book, Carswell and government publishers showing price increases from 13.5% to 22%, others such as Butterworths, CCH, SOQUIJ, Maritime Law Book and Wilson & LaFleur increasing prices by no more than 5.5%, and Yvon Blais even reducing its prices by 15%
• the highest price increases were in the areas of family law (+24%) and torts (+23%), the lowest were found for serials in employment & labour (+4%) and there was no increase (0%) for estates, trusts and wills
• over the 1996-2004 period, Carswell prices increased the most (average 12.38% p.a.)
• last year, the biggest price increase was for Carswell's Domestic Contracts (+163.69%); the biggest reduction was for the looseleaf edition of the Alberta Statutes (-63.16%)