Logical Reasoning

PT136 · S4 · Q8 A significant amount

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A significant amount of the acquisition budget of a typical university library is spent on subscriptions to scholarly journals.

Conclusion

In most cases, publishing a scholarly journal must be more profitable now than several years ago.

Evidence

Over the last several years, the average subscription rate libraries pay for these journals has gone up a bunch, while the costs of publishing the journals have remained constant.

Evaluation

Given that the average revenue per subscription is higher than before, but the costs per subscription are the same, how could we resist thinking that they're more profitable?

We should be very careful with Relative concepts like average / percent / ratio / fraction, and always ask ourselves, "What about the real numbers?

If the journals used to be $50 / subscription but now they're $60 / subscription, are we definitely making more money?

Only if we're still selling as many subscriptions (technically, as long as we're selling more than 5/6 as many subscriptions in my example but LSAT would never get that mathy).

Goal

Look for an answer saying that they're not selling as many subscriptions as before.

Which one of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?

Many university libraries have begun
No Impact
We need a way to argue that journal publishers aren't making more money these days, and this answer doesn't say anything related to them.
4% picked this
A university library's acquisition budget
No Impact
We need a way to argue that journal publishers aren't making more money these days, and this answer doesn't say anything related to them.
2% picked this
Publishing a scholarly journal is
No Impact
We need a way to argue that journal publishers aren't making more money these days. This is a "timeless" answer. It doesn't show some comparative difference between several years ago and now that would allow us to say they aren't making more money (despite the fact that subscription prices have gone up)
13% picked this
Correct
Most subscribers to scholarly journals
Why this is right
This gets at the strength of language in the conclusion: much more money than several years ago. This helps us argue that journal publishers are not making much more money than before, because even if they're making more money from colleges, the bulk of their business comes from individuals, for whom the subscription price never went up. In our evaluation of the argument, we didn't notice this modifier on the conclusion. We were only fighting the battle of "profits haven't gone up", but because of that modifier much more profitable, we really should have been fighting the battle of "it's not much more profitable", which would have better allowed us to think about ways to argue "it's not more profitable at all" as well as "yes, it's somewhat more profitable, but not much more profitable".
Skill tested: Weaken · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
79% picked this
The majority of scholarly journals
No Impact
We don't care about how frequently they're published (unless it's changed from several years ago). We care about how many subscriptions the colleges are buying from the publishers, compared to several years ago.
2% picked this

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