Jondi Gumz, UCSC faculty threaten to boycott publisher over journal subscriptions' costs, Santa Cruz Sentinel , October 31, 2003. Good coverage of the boycott by a local paper. Excerpt: "University librarians are stunned that rate hikes for online journal subscriptions outpace the Consumer Price Index. They contend publishing mergers have pushed prices higher....'They try to hold us to ransom,' said [Ben] Crow [associate professor of sociology at UCSC], who taught at Stanford and Berkeley before coming to UCSC in 1996. He noted Elsevier's profits were up 26 percent in the past year, 'nearly a monopoly profit.' The threatened boycott has shaken [Elsevier], according to Crow, who said the company 'asked us to call off the dogs.' About 1,000 UC faculty are on the boards of Elsevier journals, and about 150 UC faculty are senior editors for those journals. UC faculty also provide at least 10 percent of the research papers published by Elsevier, according to Crow." (Thanks to Gary Price.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/02/2003 04:40:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
