On January 7, the University of California announced the results of its negotiations with Elsevier: cancellation of about 200 journals and renewal of about 1200. It did not disclose the renewal price. Excerpt: "The economics of scholarly journal publishing are incontrovertibly unsustainable. Taming price inflation is not enough. Unless we change the current model, academic libraries and universities will be unable to continue providing faculty, students, and staff with the access they require to the world?s scholarship and knowledge. Scholars will be unable to make the results of their research widely available. These are not statements about any single company, about the strengths and
weaknesses of for- and not-for-profit publishing, or about the prospects
of open-access versus subscription-based journal models. They are merely
observations about economic reality." (Thanks to Ross Scaife.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/09/2004 08:17:00 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.
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.
