Dan Carnevale, Libraries With Tight Budgets Renew Complaints About Elsevier's Online Pricing, Chronicle of Higher Education, December 19, 2003 (accessible only to subscribers). Excerpt: "A growing number of colleges in the country are rebelling against [Elsevier's] rates and terms for online science journals. Some of the institutions are even cutting back on their subscriptions to avoid having to pay for a 'bundle' of the publications, which university libraries on tight budgets say they can no long afford....The University of Missouri decided over the summer to stop subscribing to ScienceDirect. Cornell University announced last month that it would stop paying for the entire collection, and would instead take out individual subscriptions to a smaller number of journals. The University of Iowa, which is facing additional reductions in its state appropriation, may join other institutions in abandoning ScienceDirect. The Faculty Senate at North Carolina State University passed a resolution condemning bundling and the amount of money being spent on the company's journals. And two professors at the University of California at San Francisco are calling for a nationwide boycott of six molecular-biology journals, sold only by Elsevier, because of the price." Unlike other stories on the growing wave of cancellations, this story doesn't mention the open access alternative.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/15/2003 10:31:00 AM.
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.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
