As much as it is a broken system, in this case likely no. The actual subscriptions are cost prohibitive pretty much just to individuals and to organizations outside western Academia. The distinction of &quot;western&quot; is only relevant in that from what I recall working with Librarians at my last University job, the publishers do business differently with the US and parts of EU than they do elsewhere in the world.<p>Rising tuition costs are an issue, but in relation to an academic budget, journal subscriptions will still account for a very small percent of the overall budget, even for relatively small University.<p>The Publisher&#x2F;University subscription loop, however, is indeed real and has been covered here before I believe. The short of it is that quite a few publishers are basically held together by taxpayer money in the form of continued library subscriptions. The need for a middleman in these cases is pretty questionable, as the publishers basically just host the content at this point and do no curation or peer review themselves.