California against NatureWhen journal publishers raise subscription prices faster than inflation and faster than library budgets, for decades, what do they think will happen?
SPARC Open Access Newsletter, issue #147
July 2, 2010
by Peter Suber
(According to the ARL's well-known chart, average journal prices have risen about four times faster than inflation since the mid-1980's. In June, Mark Bauerlein and four co-authors reported that "[f]rom 1978 to 2001, libraries at the University of California at Los Angeles...saw their subscription costs alone climb by 1,300 percent.")
http://www.arl.org/sparc/bm~pix/journal-price-graph~s600x600.jpg
http://chronicle.com/article/We-Must-Stop-the-Avalanche-of/65890/
Do publishers think that other institutions will start writing checks when libraries run out of money? Do they just want to squeeze out all the profits they can before crunch time? Do they see crunch time coming but hope to be among the survivors of the resulting shake-out? Or do they really not see crunch time coming?
When Richard Poynder asked me similar questions in 2007, I had to reply, "I really don't know. It's possible that [publishers] are just delaying adaptation as long as possible. But it's also possible that some really believe their longevity is assured by their past value." I've also described the strategy as "accelerating into a brick wall".
http://poynder.blogspot.com/2007/10/basement-interviews-peter-suber.html
http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3942940/suber_news93.html#predictions
No matter how you characterize it, this was precisely the situation that the University of California librarians described --in a January 2004 letter to UC faculty-- as "incontrovertibly unsustainable".
http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/facmemoscholcomm_010704.pdf
In a new letter to faculty last month, the same institution said in effect that crunch time has arrived.
The drama is playing out between the University of California (UC) and the Nature Publishing Group (NPG). There have been three primary documents to date:
Round 1 (June 4, 2010). UC sent a letter to all its faculty saying that NPG was trying to raise the price of UC's site license by 400%, or more than $1 million. UC had been cancelling other titles in order to cope with its painfully reduced budget. Paying the NPG price increase would wipe out all the savings it had already realized. If NPG did not relent, UC told its faculty that it would not renew any NPG titles next year. It added that "more drastic actions may be necessary." UC had already "begun to assemble a group of Faculty that will help lead a UC Systemwide boycott of NPG." If NPG insisted on a price increase --apparently any price increase-- then UC would "strongly encourage" its faculty to stop submitting work to NPG journals, stop refereeing articles for NPG journals, stop advertising new UC positions in NPG journals, resign from NPG editorial and advisory boards, and "encourage sympathy actions" from colleagues outside UC. The university calculated that over the past six years UC authors had published about 5,300 articles in NPG journals, including 638 in Nature itself, bringing the publisher "at least $19 million" in revenue during the same period. While waiting to hear the final word from NPG, UC encouraged its faculty to comply with OA policies from funders like NIH, use UC's OA repository and publishing platform, consider submitting new work to OA journals, and retain copyrights when publishing in scholarly journals.
http://libraries.ucsd.edu/collections/Nature_Faculty_Letter-June_2010.pdf
The UC letter was signed by Laine Farley, Executive Director of the California Digital Library; Richard A. Schneider, Associate Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery and Chair of the University Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication; and Brian E. C. Schottlaender, University Librarian at UC San Diego and Convener of the University Librarians Council.
Round 2 (June 9, 2010). In its reply, NPG expressed shock, criticized UC's calculations, and accused the university of misrepresenting NPG's price increase. NPG asserted that UC had enjoyed a "very large, unsustainable discount for many years" and was being subsidized by other NPG subscribers around the world. It claimed that UC enjoyed an 88% discount from list prices, and that NPG was merely trying to reduce the discount to 50%. It claimed that its list-price increases have averaged 7% per year for the past four years and are currently capped at 7% per year. It criticized the idea of a boycott "not least because it is detrimental to the advance of science" and insisted that "we will not be bullied into continuing [UC's] subsidy by our other customers." NPG has "actively supported and encouraged" all of UC's OA recommendations (except submitting work to OA journals) since 2005. Finally, it protested that UC was making confidential negotations public.
http://www.nature.com/press_releases/cdl.html
Round 3 (June 10, 2010). In its reply to NPG's reply, UC pointed out it was talking about the price increase on its site license, not the increase on list prices. UC dismissed the subsidy claim as "nonsensical", in part because list prices are "meaningless numbers" that "most institutions" never pay. And if they did pay them, 7% annual increases would still be hyperinflationary and unsustainable. UC also explained that it did not write an open letter for the public, but sent it to its faculty, whom it is obligated to keep informed about negotiations. While NPG contends that the negotiations were open-ended and ongoing, UC recalls that NPG stood by its price and said it would not entertain counter-offers. The "UC Libraries contemplate budget reductions of 20% or more over the next two years on top of reductions already taken in 2010" and welcomes "authentic discussions" with NPG about value and price.
http://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/UC_Response_to_Nature_Publishing_Group.pdf
The press and blogosphere have been buzzing with comments, but the parties themselves have been publicly silent since June 10. Laine Farley, Executive Director of the California Digital Library, told me that UC and NPG are looking for a date to resume their discussions.
* One bit of background: The University of California is one of the largest universities in the world. It has 191,000+ students and 13,300+ faculty on 10 campuses. Its libraries have more than 34 million volumes.
http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/
http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/cultural/libraries.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_universities_by_enrollment
The size and stature of the UC libraries give them enormous bargaining power when negotiating with publishers.
At the same time, NPG's unparalleled prestige and impact give it enormous bargaining power when negotiating with universities.
* Another bit of background: NPG has been more active than most conventional journal publishers in experimenting with OA. I listed its many OA projects in a blog post in July 2007. I don't have time to update the list, but NPG has added new OA experiments and projects commitments regularly since then. For example, in May 2010 it finished converting all its academic journals to hybrid OA. In April 2010 it published an editorial supporting the NIH mandate and "its extension to other agencies" through FRPAA and/or an Obama executive order, with the proviso that the policies accommodate variable embargo periods. "Publishers must be able to negotiate embargo intervals that will fulfil their obligation to allow greater public access but not jeopardize their businesses. And publishers, in turn, need to recognize that science's social contract is evolving towards greater openness."
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007/07/nature-and-indian-oa-journal-discussing.html
http://www.nature.com/press_releases/openaccess.html
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/464813a
Despite these OA initiatives, NPG has had a regressive self-archiving or "green" policy since January 2005 when it put a six month embargo on its permission for self-archiving. It was one of the first publishers, and is still one of the only publishers, to put any kind of embargo on green OA. Most journal publishers allow immediate or unembargoed green OA, including those who have voiced the fear that rising levels of green OA will trigger cancellations. Moreover, if any publisher could weather the effects of immediate rather than delayed green OA, it's NPG.
Until last month, the Royal Society followed NPG in putting an embargo on its permission for OA archiving. But in June it lifted its embargo.
https://arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/5515.html
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/751-Royal-Society-Endorses-Immediate-Green-Open-Access-Self-Archiving-By-Its-Authors.html
* Just as NPG's prestige and prosperity position it to weather the effects of immediate green OA, they position it to survive any crunch-time shakeout. I told Richard Poynder in 2007 (p. 68) that even in a hypothetical future world when OA was the default, "the most prestigious toll-access journals — journals like Nature — may be able to charge subscription fees forever, or for as long as they maintain the level of prestige they have today. They will still be must-haves in a university library, and they will be even easier for a university to afford once most other journals are open access."
http://poynder.blogspot.com/2007/10/basement-interviews-peter-suber.html
Today I can add that if steadily shrinking budgets mean that libraries steadily shrink their conception of a "must-have" journal, Nature is better positioned than any journal in the world to remain in that protected set, even if the same cannot be said of all the journals in NPG's portfolio.
* Or that was the prognosis before the recent conflict with UC. NPG could have survived painful library budget cuts longer than any other publisher. It could have waited for other publisher price increases to break the camel's back, trigger a wave of cancellations, or inspire author/editor/referee boycotts. But by precipitating this crisis with UC, it may be first on UC's cancellation list for next year and first for any institutions that follow UC's lead. NPG may be throwing away a marketing advantage decades in the making.
* I have no opinion on Nature's claim that UC was benefiting from a deep discount. But if it's true that UC has enjoyed a deeper discount than other universities, that's a sign that UC's bargaining power exceeds that of other universities, just as NPG's bargaining power exceeds that of other publishers.
Hence, we may be witnessing a face-off between the world's most powerful university and the world's most powerful publisher. If that didn't raise the stakes enough, public statements on both sides now make it difficult to blink and back down.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Kong_vs._Godzilla
If other schools have been subsidizing UC, then those other schools should be protesting today even more than UC is. And as Kent Anderson pointed out, if NPG extracts more money from UC, then it should lower its prices to schools that have been subsidizing UC.
http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2010/06/14/the-latest-library-as-purchaser-crisis-are-we-fighting-the-wrong-battle/
If other schools with less bargaining power have been subsidizing UC, then their prices are higher and their value per dollar is lower. Worse, they will be unable to bargain their way out of their hole. They will need to attach themselves to the momentum of a larger movement. If NPG is right about UC's discount, then it should expect to find that many other institutions are willing to join a general boycott, if that is what this becomes. Their budgets may not be quite as devastated as UC's (no states are as close to bankruptcy as California). But the spark will fall on dry tinder.
* There are two sorts of journal price increase. One is based on increased costs. It's hard for outside observers to tell when higher prices reflect higher costs, but we know that some price increases are of that kind. The other sort is a price increase unrelated to costs that the publisher thinks the market will bear. The publisher could be banking on the journal's prestige, the journal's mini-monopoly (no other journal publishes the same articles), or the perceived equity of catching up with similar journals or moving with the pack. Again, outside observers can't easily tell what portion of a price increase might be due to this cause, but we can be sure that some parts of some price increases fit this description.
Price increases of the second kind are obnoxious in a culture in which universities subsidize authors, editors, and referees for the benefit of publishers, and especially obnoxious after decades of hyperinflationary price increases. There is no reason for universities to put up with price increases unrelated to costs, especially now that there is an alternative. Indeed, at some point, slow-growing budgets and the fast-growing volume of research mean that universities can't even put up with price increases directly related to rising costs, or even with flat prices.
http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3997173/suber_news71.html#scaling
Publishers like to argue that all of their price increases reflect increased costs. But they've done a very bad job at making the case. It's hard to believe that their costs have been rising faster than inflation since the 1970's or 1980's. (BTW, the same is true of university tuition increases.) It's hard to believe that costs at the commercial giants, which enjoy greater economies of scale, have been going up faster than costs at small society publishers. It's hard to believe that all price increases reflect increased costs when profit margins at the same commercial giants exceed 20% or 30%. It's hard to believe that costs rise faster than inflation when authors give publishers their raw material free of charge, and when referees evaluate and help refine the raw material free of charge. It's hard to believe that costs continue to rise faster than inflation after publishers shift to e-only publishing and drop their print editions.
Insofar as publishers are testing to see what the market will bear, the burden is on universities to answer.
I've often criticized universities for not acting decisively in their own interests, especially when publishers are aggressively acting in *their* own interests. I've often criticized universities (and governments) for putting the interests of publishers ahead of their own interests.
http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3716772/suber_news130.html#choicepoints
http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3716788/suber_news139.html#publicgood
http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3716763/suber_news142.html#energy
http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3743006/suber_new143.html#missions
But I'm not saying that here. Bravo to UC for acting decisively in its own interest. Bravo for drawing the line. Bravo for vowing to use its rare bargaining power to fight back.
* If publishers have been accelerating into a brick wall for decades, and libraries have been warning about the inevitable collision for decades, then why hasn't there been a collision before now?
There are two answers. First, many collisions have already occurred, even if they came and went without the same media attention. Universities have been canceling titles by the hundreds --and in the case of big-deal cancellations, by the thousands-- for years. Even when collisions are incremental and cumulative rather than sudden and explosive, they have the same finality. And they have the same catastrophic effect on access to the portion of new research that is metered out to paying customers.
Second, when universities renewed more titles than they could realistically afford, it's not because found previously undiscovered or undisclosed pots of money. It's because they made painful cuts in order to find the money. Most of these cuts came from their book budgets, extending a serials crisis in the sciences to a monograph crisis in the humanities. The long series of small collisions is a measure of the pain universities have endured to postpone a wider and larger one.
At some point there really isn't any money left, or the money can only be found through cuts more painful than journal cancellations. After several decades of hyperinflationary price increases, followed by a severe recession, continuing business as usual will bring a critical mass of universities to that critical point. Publishers aren't just witnesses to this impending crunch. Those that continue to charge hyperinflationary price increases are accelerating it. Those that won't survive the resulting shake-out, even if their own prices had been moderate and affordable, will be co-victims with researchers and research institutions.
* In the same month that UC reached the end of its rope with NPG, the Virtual Library of Virginia reached the end of its rope with Wiley. After an unsuccessful seven-month negotiation, Virginia decided to cancel its subscription to the Blackwell Synergy Journal Collection.
http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/ListArchives/1006/msg00109.html
In the same month, the University of Prince Edward Island reached the end of its rope with ISI's Web of Science (WoS), canceled its WoS subscription and sent an open letter to faculty explaining why:
http://library.upei.ca/node/1496
Late last year we received notification that our subscription price was going to increase by 120%. A number of factors went into the decision not to renew: [1] a challenging fiscal climate means that we are unlikely to see an increase to Library budgets; [2] any subscription increase in these challenging times is difficult, but an increase of 120% is simply not acceptable; [3] we would have been forced to sign a 3-year agreement, with additional increases in each of the 3 years; [4] a weaker Canadian dollar would have a significant impact on our subscription costs; [5] accommodating this level of increase lends credence to the vendors' business practices and we felt it important to make a statement against these practices....Note the similarities to the UC rationale, including the triple-digit price increase, the recession, and the importance of speaking out against the business practices that harm research.
It's tempting to distinguish two phases of the serials pricing crisis. In the Early Crisis, universities resented hyperinflationary price increases and spoke out against them, but generally made painful cuts elsewhere to meet them. In the Late Crisis, universities lost their ability to cut further and spoke out against harmful and unsustainable business models, not just harmful and unsustainable price increases. UC is not the first sign of the Late Crisis, but it's size and clout make it one of the most influential.
* In the first half of 2009, six major library organizations and research institutions published position papers on the recession, urging publishers to freeze or cut prices. Some of the statements went further and urged the research community and policy-makers to move forward with OA. See the statements from the International Coalition of Library Consortia (January 2009), the Association for Research LIbraries (February 2009), Research Information Network (March 2009), NorthEast Research Libraries (April 2009), the University of California Libraries (May 2009), and the Medical Library Association and the Association of Academic Health Science Libraries (May 2009).
http://www.library.yale.edu/consortia/icolc-econcrisis-0109.htm
http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/economic-statement-2009.pdf
http://www.rin.ac.uk/scholarly-journals-risk
http://www.library.yale.edu/NERLpublic/NERLlettertoVendors0409.pdf
http://www.cdlib.org/news/pdf/UC_Libraries_Open_Letter_to_Vendors.pdf
http://data.memberclicks.com/site/aahsl/Statement_May_2009.pdf
But the crisis didn't end when the recession appeared to bottom out. In December 2009, David Nicholas and Ian Rowlands released the results of their survey of UK libraries on the economic downturn.
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/infostudies/research/ciber/charleston-survey.pdf
37.4% of institutions expect to cut spending on information resources over the next two years, 28.3% expect to cut staffing budgets and 18.1% their spending on services and infrastructure. These figures are based on absolute figures and do not account for cost inflation: publisher costs, labour costs or general inflation. We are therefore talking about some fairly deep and painful cuts, not just a continuation of the attritional gains in library efficiency that have been driven for years by below inflation budget rises. Our survey suggests that academic libraries will be the hardest hit by these budgetary pressures, with 34.3% of them expecting to receive a smaller budget in two years’ time than they do currently. For a small minority, 6.9%, the pain will be very severe, since their budgets will be more than 10% smaller than they are this year.In March 2010, the Research Information Network updated its 2009 report with a new one. Its two top conclusions:
http://www.rin.ac.uk/our-work/using-and-accessing-information-resources/challenges-academic-libraries-difficult-economic-
[1] Library budgets have risen over the past ten years – although not as much as overall university income and expenditure [or as much as journal prices]....Librarians from across the higher education (HE) sector now expect budget cuts over the next three years....[2] The scale of the cuts means that libraries must rethink the kinds and levels of service they provide in support of their universities’ missions....[L]ibrarians are having to think more strategically about...the costs and sustainability of current levels of journal provision.Just last month, the International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC) updated its January 2009 Statement on the Global Economic Crisis and Its Impact on Consortial Licenses. Among the additions to the June 2010 version:
http://www.library.yale.edu/consortia/icolc-econcrisis-0610.htm
ICOLC did not overestimate the severity of cuts to library and library consortia funding levels in its original Statement. Furthermore, we believe the worst may still be before us....All parts of the world are facing negative economic repercussions....The need for pricing restraint and options remains paramount....We call upon the full range of suppliers to show price restraint in 2010-2011 to enable customers to sustain as many information resource licenses as possible.For more on the imminent crunch, see Richard Poynder's June interview with Claudio Aspesi, a financial analyst who has written two equity research reports on Elsevier. Quoting Aspesi:
http://poynder.blogspot.com/2010/06/reed-elsevier-need-for-progressive.html
If...the outcome of the budget constraints on academic libraries is a few years of slow or no revenue growth, the publishers will have, at the very least, to take costs out aggressively. If budget constraints lead to massive cancellations...and the offer to sign new contracts at 20/30% lower spending, the publishers will be under severe strain to adapt. As long as management seems to believe (at least judging from their public statements) that the probability of flat revenues for many years to come is virtually zero, one has to worry about whether there is a Plan B, who is in charge of it and what type of events would trigger it.Also in June, the Medical Library Association's Ad Hoc Committee for Advocating Scholarly Communications started compiling a list of journal publishers who are freezing their subscription prices "in recognition of continued economic constraints". It's calling for public help in compiling the list.
http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/ListArchives/1006/msg00093.html
The Royal Society, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Edinburgh University Press have already made the new list.
http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/ListArchives/1006/msg00105.html
http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/ListArchives/1006/msg00126.html
http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/ListArchives/1007/msg00000.html
The MLA tracked price freezes last year too. But NPG didn't make the list.
http://www.mlanet.org/resources/publish/sc_2010-prices.html
Also in June, two blogging scholars --Martin Weller and Michael Rees-- revived the idea of performing peer review only for OA journals, or refusing to donate labor to publishers who erect access barriers to research. This is a a step beyond the boycott plans sketched in the UC letter, which would only apply to NPG journals. Using data from a 2008 Research Information Network report, Weller and Rees estimate that scholars donate about £1.9 billion/year ($2.8 billion/year) in free labor as journal referees.
http://goo.gl/V3bL
http://goo.gl/wDv6
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=402189
This is some of the context in which NPG asked UC for a price increase somewhere between 7% (at best) and 400% (at worst).
* At the end of her June 8 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Jennifer Howard quoted Keith Yamamoto, Executive Vice Dean of the School of Medicine at UC - San Francisco: "Although researchers still have 'a very strong tie to traditional journals' like Nature, [Yamamoto] said, scientific publishing has evolved in the seven years since the Elsevier boycott. 'In many ways it doesn't matter where the work's published, because scientists will be able to find it....'"
http://chronicle.com/article/U-of-California-Tries-Just/65823/
Yamamoto's remark triggered nearly as much commentary as the threatened boycott itself. Of course his claim about findability is true. Or it's true for OA articles. But just as clearly, it sidesteps a critical point. Researchers aspire to publish in Nature not because it makes their work more findable than work published in lower-ranked journals or deposited in OA repositories. They want Nature's imprimatur. They want the kudos that flow from a Nature publication, which will boost the influence of their work and advance their careers. Few scholars realize that green OA allows them to have Nature's prestige and OA's enlarged audience and impact at the same time, and few scholars realize that submitting their best work to OA journals will help excellent OA journals earn prestige in proportion to their quality.
Findability is no longer a critical issue, except for print-only journals or repositories carelessly configured to deter search engine crawlers. The latest studies show that finding or discovering relevant new work is now much easier than accessing or retrieving it.
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/publications/reports/2010/digitalinformationseekerreport.pdf
http://www.rin.ac.uk/our-work/using-and-accessing-information-resources/overcoming-barriers-access-research-information
Online sources are not differentiated by findability so much as by accessibility and brand. Nature is counting on the power of brand, and UC's struggle against NPG's bargaining position will also be a struggle against many of its own faculty. But if universities find that faculty kneel to the power of brand, they have only themselves to blame. As I argued in 2007,
http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3783613/suber_news105.html
[I]t would help if universities would recognize their complicity in the problem they are trying to solve. By rewarding faculty who win a journal's imprimatur, mindful of the journal's prestige but heedless of its access policies, universities shift bargaining power from authors to publishers of high-prestige journals. They give publishers less incentive to modify their standard contracts and authors greater incentive to sign whatever publishers put in front of them.On the other side, however, as Jennifer Howard also noted in her Chronicle article, Yamamoto "said he's confident that there will be broad support for a boycott among the faculty if the Nature Group doesn't negotiate, even if it means some hardships for individual researchers." This doesn't have to be whistling in the dark. Faculty groups have said themselves that they are willing to bear the hardships, both as authors (no longer publishing in certain journals) and as readers (no longer having prepaid access to certain journals). Here are a few statements from UC's own campuses.
On the hardships for authors, see the October 2003 Academic Senate resolution drafted by the the Committee on the Library at UC Santa Cruz:
http://senate.ucsc.edu/col/res.1405.pdf
[T]he UCSC Academic Senate resolves to call upon its tenured members to give serious and careful consideration to cutting their ties with Elsevier: no longer submitting papers to Elsevier journals, refusing to referee the submissions of others, and relinquishing editorial posts. The Senate also calls upon its Committee on Academic Personnel to recognize that some faculty may choose not to submit papers to Elsevier journals even when those journals are highly ranked. Faculty choosing to follow the advice of this resolution should not be penalized.Also see the similar statement (November 2003) from the UC San Francisco Academic Senate
http://senate.ucsf.edu/2003-2004/ASO-11-01-03-Publications.pdf
On the hardships for readers, see the March 2005 Scholarly Publishing Statement of Principles by UC Berkeley Faculty Senate:
http://academic-senate.berkeley.edu/archives/documents/statement_of_principles_for_web.pdf
Libraries around the world are beginning to take a hard line when negotiating contracts with publishers and societies that put profits above scholarly communication. The faculty and administration of the University of California, Berkeley will support the Library's efforts to curtail unsustainable pricing structures even if this sometimes means losing access to titles.For similar statements by non-UC faculty, see my old list (no longer maintained).
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/lists.htm#actions
We're finally witnessing a strong test of the value of brand. Is brand so valuable that a university at the end of its rope will accept one more hyperinflationary price increase, after decades of cumulative hyperinflationary price increases? Despite the tightness of budgets, we can imagine that the power of brand will win again. After all, that's what has happened for the past 20-30 years. But conversely, despite the power of brand, we can imagine that tight budgets and a back-to-the-wall determination to dismantle access barriers to research will determine the outcome. After all, that's what it means to be at the end of one's rope.
Whatever the outcome in this case, universities looking for a long-term solution to this problem should stop elevating brand and disregarding access in the incentives they create through their promotion and tenure committees. Excellence should be their top concern, and they will usually say that it is. But in their search for excellent candidates who have done excellent research or written excellent articles, they should stop taking shortcuts by using brand or simplistic metrics as substitutes for the hard work of assessing quality.
http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3716778/suber_news125.html#prestige
Universities should follow the advice from UC Santa Cruz quoted above. If they want to dismantle access barriers for research, or reclaim scholarly communication for the benefit of researchers and research institutions, then they can't have their promotion and tenure committees penalize scholars who join the cause.
* Finally, universities should adopt effective green OA policies.
UC started developing a green OA mandate in December 2005 and still hasn't finished. The Assembly of the Academic Senate voted (unanimously) in May 2006 to launch the process, and started circulating a draft policy in January 2007.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006/01/california-proposes-oa-policy-for.html
http://goo.gl/oJka
http://goo.gl/DORH
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007/02/u-of-california-considers-indirect-oa.html
http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3716785/suber_news119.html#california
In June 2008 the stalled policy was reinvigorated by the unanimous vote for an OA mandate by the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences four months earlier.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6574118.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/06/what-happened-to-california-draft-oa.html
But in April 2009 we learned that "[a]fter going through eight draft forms, the policy was abandoned due to academic senate concerns."
http://www.newuniversity.org/2009/04/news/journals_the_cost_of186/
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/04/update-on-oa-discussion-at-u-of.html
Unfortunately, that's where the UC policy still stands today.
However, in its original letter to faculty, the UC urged faculty to take four "positive actions" to "help break the monopoly that commercial and for-profit entities like NPG hold over the work that we create":
http://libraries.ucsd.edu/collections/Nature_Faculty_Letter-June_2010.pdf
[1] Complying with open access policies from Federal funding agencies such as the NIH...; [2] Utilizing eScholarship, an open access repository service from CDL...; [3] Considering other high-quality research publishing outlets, including open access journals such as those published by PLoS and others; [and 4] Insisting on language in publication agreements that allows UC authors to retain their copyright....I second all these suggestions and would like to strengthen #2. Faculty can use an OA repository as readers or authors or both. They should start using it as authors. They should deposit their new work in the repository, if they are not already doing so. Most publishers --including NPG-- already allow it. For publishers not already allowing it, recommendation #4 solves the permission problem.
UC may not have a system-wide OA policy, but UC faculty don't have to wait for one. If they're energized to join a boycott, they should be energized to make their own work OA through the UC repository or through OA journals. Boycotting NPG won't necessarily make any new work OA. But if faculty make their new work OA through repositories or journals (green or gold OA), that will directly advance OA and move us toward the long-term removal of access barriers to research. Moreover, we can realize these benefits for all our publications, not just the small subset that we would have published in NPG journals.
If the desire to act is more than sporadic, and starts to gel into system-wide consensus, UC faculty should pick up the stalled OA policy talks and run to the finish line.
* In addition to the four steps UC recommended to faculty, it took two additional steps of its own in June. It became an institutional supporting member of arXiv and bought an Institutional Membership in Oxford's (OA) Nucleic Acids Research. The steps are not large, but they show UC's willingness to spend money to support an OA alternative, even while it draws the line at further price increases from NPG.
http://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/2010/06/11/uc-continues-to-support-open-access-resources/
* It's too early to predict the outcome of the UC-NPG conflict. But I can say that the outcome I most fear is also one of the most likely: UC and NPG will reach a compromise and neither side will be allowed to reveal what it is. We won't know whether UC accepted one more painful, unsustainable price increase (even if smaller than the one NPG first demanded) or whether UC forced NPG to offer more affordable, sustainable terms (even if no other university will receive the same terms).
If that's what happens, I hope we'll soon be able to read the details at the Big Deal Contract Project, launched last summer by Ted Bergstrom, Paul Courant, and R. Preston McAfee. The project uses open records laws to force the disclosure of university-publisher contracts. The method doesn't work everywhere, but it works especially well for public universities like UC.
http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/Journals/BundleContracts.html
The world is watching.
* Here are some news stories and blog comments on the UC-NPG conflict.
Lulu Liu, UC fumes at publisher over $1 million in extra fees, Fresno Bee, June 27, 2010.
http://www.fresnobee.com/2010/06/27/1986115/uc-fumes-at-publisher-over-1-million.html
Stevan Harnad, Setting the record straight in the UC/NPG pricing kerfuffle, Open Access Archivangelism, June 17, 2010.
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/743-Setting-the-record-straight-in-the-UCNPG-pricing-kerfuffle.html
Barbara Fister, Boycotting (Human) Nature, Library Journal, June 17, 2010.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/newsletters/newsletterbucketacademicnewswire/885401-440/boycotting_human_nature__peer.html.csp
Derek Lowe, California vs. Nature, Corante, June 15, 2010.
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/06/15/california_vs_nature.php
Dorothea Salo, "It's quiet —too quiet;" with a digression into online social media, The Book of Trogol, June 15, 2010.
http://scienceblogs.com/bookoftrogool/2010/06/its_quiettoo_quiet_with_a_digr.php
Kent Anderson, The Latest “Library as Purchaser” Crisis: Are We Fighting the Wrong Battle? Scholarly Kitchen, June 14, 2010.
http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2010/06/14/the-latest-library-as-purchaser-crisis-are-we-fighting-the-wrong-battle/
Alie Bidwell, UC Librarians Urge Professors To Boycott Publishing Company, Daily Californian, June 14, 2010.
http://www.dailycal.org/article/109651/uc_librarians_urge_professors_to_boycott_publishin
Kent Smith, The Worm at the Core (and several mixed metaphors), Scholarly Communication @ Duke, June 14, 2010.
http://library.duke.edu/blogs/scholcomm/2010/06/14/the-worm-at-the-core-and-several-mixed-metaphors/
Bernd-Christoph Kaemper, UC v. NPG, LibLicense, June 14, 2010.
http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/ListArchives/1006/msg00047.html
Jonathan Eisen, Scooped in a good way by my own brother re Nature-UC dispute, The Tree of Life, June 11, 2010.
http://phylogenomics.blogspot.com/2010/06/scooped-in-good-way-by-my-own-brother.html
John Mark Ockerbloom, Journal liberation: A primer, Everybody's Libraries, June 11, 2010.
http://everybodyslibraries.com/2010/06/11/journal-liberation-a-primer/
Paul Jump, Librarians at the gate over licensing rate, Times Higher Education Supplement, June 11, 2010.
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=412028
Steve Lawson, Communicating to faculty about Nature Publishing Group, See Also, June 11, 2010.
http://stevelawson.name/seealso/archives/2010/06/communicating_to_faculty_about_nature_publishing_group.html
Maura Smale, Big News in Scholarly Publishing, From the Library of Maura, June 11, 2010.
http://msmale.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2010/06/11/big-news-in-scholarly-publishing/
Nature boycott threat, eCancer MedicalScience, June 11, 2010.
http://www.ecancermedicalscience.com/news-insider-news.asp?itemId=1080
Eric Hellman, How Electronic Resources Really Get Priced, go to hellman, June 11, 2010.
http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2010/06/how-electronic-resources-really-get.html
Matt Wedel, University of California vs. Nature, Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week, June 11, 2010.
http://svpow.wordpress.com/2010/06/11/university-of-california-vs-nature/
Cynthia Lee, UC libraries, faculty protest planned price hike by Nature publisher, UCLA Today, June 10, 2010.
http://today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/uc-libraries-faculty-protest-proposed-160117.aspx
Dorothea Salo, Gauntlet volleying, The Book of Trogol, June 10, 2010.
http://scienceblogs.com/bookoftrogool/2010/06/gauntlet_volleying.php
Michael Hoffman, Of course you realize this means war! Metafilter, June 10, 2010.
http://www.metafilter.com/92705/Of-course-you-realize-this-means-war
John Timmer, California libraries gearing up for fight against Nature (Updated), Ars Technica, June 10, 2010.
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/06/california-libraries-gearing-up-for-fight-against-nature.ars
Megan Scudellari, Support for UC-Nature ban, June 10, 2010.
http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/57491/
Michael Eisen, The Nature kerfuffle: Boycott the business model, not the price, The Berkeley Blog, June 10, 2010.
http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2010/06/10/the-nature-kerfuffle-boycott-the-business-model-not-the-price/
Norman Oder, UC Libraries, Nature Publishing Group in Heated Dispute Over Pricing; Boycott Possible, Library Journal, June 10, 2010.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/home/885271-264/uc_libraries_nature_publishing_group.html.csp
Klaus Graf, Wissenschaftsverlage verdienen prächtig an kostenlosen Wissenschaftlerbeiträgen, Archivalia, June 10, 2010.
http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/6374356/
Jason Jackson Baird, OA Tracking Project, Connotea, Nature Publishing Group, Threatened UC Boycott, Jason Jackson Baird, June 9, 2010.
http://jasonbairdjackson.com/2010/06/09/oa-tracking-project-connotea-nature-publishing-group-threatened-uc-boycott/
Jennifer Howard, Nature Publishing Group Defends Its Price Increase for U. of California, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 9, 2010.
http://wiredcampus.chronicle.com/article/Nature-Publishing-Group/65848/
Anon, U. of California System Threatens Boycott Over Journal Prices, Inside Higher Ed, June 9, 2010.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/06/09/qt#229628
Dorothea Salo, Musings on worms turning, The Book of Trogol, June 9, 2010.
http://scienceblogs.com/bookoftrogool/2010/06/musings_on_worms_turning.php
Jocelyn Kaiser, University of California Considers Boycott Against Nature Journals, Science, June 9, 2010.
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/06/university-of-california-conside.html
Alan Cann, How could they get it so wrong? Science of the Invisible, June 9, 2010.
http://scienceoftheinvisible.blogspot.com/2010/06/how-could-they-get-it-so-wrong.html
Anon., What Goes Around Comes Around: University of California Threatens System-Wide Boycott of Nature Publishing Group, Depth First, June 9, 2010.
http://depth-first.com/articles/2010/06/09/what-goes-around-comes-around-university-of-california-threatens-system-wide-boycott-of-nature-publishing-group
Janet Stemwedel, Shrinking budgets + skyrocketing subscription fees = UC boycott of NPG, Adventures in Ethics and Science, June 9, 2010.
http://scienceblogs.com/ethicsandscience/2010/06/shrinking_budgets_skyrocketing.php
Jim Till, UC versus NPG: First Round, Be openly accessible or be obscure, June 9, 2010.
http://tillje.wordpress.com/2010/06/09/uc-versus-npg-first-round/
Bjorn Brembs, Let's Join UC And Boycott Publishers Who Profit From Public Research And Public Funds, Bjorn Brembs Blog, June 9, 2010.
http://bjoern.brembs.net/comment-n617.html
Bethany Nowviskie, fight club soap, Nowviskie.org, June 9, 2010.
http://nowviskie.org/2010/fight-club-soap/
Eberhard R. Hilf, Universität von Californien gegen 400 Prozent Preissteigerung von Nature, Zugang zum Wissen Journal, June 9, 2010.
http://www.zugang-zum-wissen.de/journal/archives/158-Universitaet-von-Californien-gegen-400-Prozent-Preissteigerung-von-Nature.html
Dorothea Salo, California throws the gauntlet in NPG's face, The Book of Trogol, June 8, 2010.
http://scienceblogs.com/bookoftrogool/2010/06/california_throws_the_gauntlet.php
Christina Pikas, Holy Cow – University of California system may boycott all Nature Publishing Group Journals, Christina's LIS Rant, June 8, 2010.
http://scienceblogs.com/christinaslisrant/2010/06/holy_cow_university_of_califor.php
Jennifer Howard, U. of California Tries Just Saying No to Rising Journal Costs, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 8, 2010.
http://chronicle.com/article/U-of-California-Tries-Just/65823/
(Also see the long comment section.)
* To track future articles on this controversy, follow the "oa.boycott" feed at the OA Tracking Project.
http://www.connotea.org/tag/oa.boycott
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