And yet the amount of money libraries spend on getting access to published scholarly research has gone up astronomically too. [1] [2] (even if you normalize it for inflation, or per university FTE, or as a percentage of library or university budgets, whatever. Astronomicaly.)

So where's the money going?

When Elsevier reported 36% profit margins in 2010 according to Wikipedia[3], I have trouble believing that publishers are being squeezed too much. At least not Elsevier and other mega-publishers. I can't easily find googlable historical Elsevier reported profit margins, but I would be shocked if they have actually gone down rather than up over the past 10-15 years.

For comparison, it looks like traditional major book publishers have profit margins of around 10%. [4]

Wikipedia states and cites << [Elsevier] also claimed that its profit margins are "simply a consequence of the firm's efficient operation" >>

It doesn't sound like decreasing margins to me, and it doesn't seem that way to the universities paying for these margins, who can't afford it.

[1] http://www.marywaltham.com/Journal_pricing_change_Oct08.pdf

[2] http://www.library.illinois.edu/scholcomm/journalcosts.html

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier

[4] http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2014/how-much-money-the-bigg...