LSAT 136 – Section 4 – Question 08

LSAT 136 - Section 4 - Question 08

June 2012

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Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT136 S4 Q08
+LR
Weaken +Weak
Net Effect +NetEff
Link Assumption +LinkA
A
2%
155
B
3%
156
C
11%
159
D
83%
165
E
1%
157
136
147
157
 +Medium 146.121 +SubsectionMedium

A significant amount of the acquisition budget of a typical university library is spent on subscriptions to scholarly journals. Over the last several years, the average subscription rate a library pays for such a journal has increased dramatically, even though the costs of publishing a scholarly journal have remained fairly constant. Obviously, then, in most cases publishing a scholarly journal must be much more profitable now than it was several years ago.

The author argues that publishing scholarly journals is likely much more profitable now than in the past. She supports this by pointing out that university libraries are paying much higher subscription rates, while the costs of publishing remain the same.

Notable Assumptions
The author assumes that publishers’ profits have increased just because one subset of their consumers’ are paying more. She ignores the possibility that other streams of revenue have remained unchanged or have decreased.

A
Many university libraries have begun to charge higher and higher fines for overdue books and periodicals as a way of passing on increased journal subscription costs to library users.
We are concerned with the profits of publishing companies, not libraries. We thus need an answer choice that weakens the conclusion that publishing companies’ profits have increased. (A) tells us instead what libraries are doing in response to increased costs.
B
A university library’s acquisition budget usually represents only a small fraction of its total operating budget.
Like (A), this is discussing the budget and costs of university libraries. But we are only concerned with the revenue and profits of publishing companies.
C
Publishing a scholarly journal is an expensive enterprise, and publishers of such journals cannot survive financially if they consistently lose money.
The cost of publishing a scholarly journal is irrelevant. We know that publishing costs have remained constant either way, so this doesn’t weaken the author’s conclusion that publishers’ profits have increased due to increased subscription costs for university libraries.
D
Most subscribers to scholarly journals are individuals, not libraries, and the subscription rates for individuals have generally remained unchanged for the past several years.
This weakens the argument by showing that the author’s key assumption is false. Because most subscribers are individuals whose subscription rates haven’t changed, it’s not the case that publishing a scholarly journal is much more profitable now than it was several years ago.
E
The majority of scholarly journals are published no more than four times a year.
This does not weaken the author’s conclusion that publishers’ profits have increased due to increased subscription costs for university libraries. The frequency of journal publications is irrelevant because we are only talking about the publishers’ profits.

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LSAT PrepTest 136 Explanations

Section 1 - Reading Comprehension

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Reading Comprehension

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

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