Michael Miller, Fac Sen discusses journal fees, The Stanford Daily, February 6, 2004. Excerpt: "A 'serials crisis' consumed the Faculty Senate yesterday afternoon as senate members debated a set of recommendations dealing with the high and rapidly increasing subscription costs for academic journals. With journal subscription costs having risen as much as 50 percent in the past five years and set to rise another 12 percent this year, the Committee on Libraries recommended in a report that the senate set guidelines aimed at reducing the University’s reliance on the most expensive journals. 'The cost of journals has crippled University budgets,' said Biochemistry Prof. Doug Brutlag, who presented the report. After more than an hour of discussion, the motion was put off for debate at another session....[Michael] Keller [pointed] out that for-profit publishers have been known to target articles that are in course packets, increasing costs from $15 up to $60 when they determine that a journal article is in a course reader. The proposed resolution would have said, among its four points, 'Libraries are encouraged to systematically drop journals that are unconscionably or disproportionately expensive or inflationary. Special attention should be paid to Elsevier.' It would also have encouraged faculty to withhold articles from exploitative journals....'Digital repositories are going to be the infrastructure of the future,' Keller said. 'It’s very important that we invest as a university.'"
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/06/2004 02:43:00 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.
