Brock Read covers the story in the February 9 Chronicle of Higher Education, Editorial Board of Scientific Journal Quits, Accusing Elsevier of Price-Gouging (accessible only to subscribers). Excerpt: "The Board of Directors of a scholarly journal popular with computer scientists and mathematicians has resigned en masse, accusing its distributor, Elsevier, of making the publication too expensive for many college libraries to afford....Zvi Galil, another editor of the journal and dean of the school of engineering and applied science at Columbia University, said that Elsevier had increased the subscription rates unnecessarily, because production costs for the journal had not risen recently. 'Basically, we do all the work,' Mr. Galil said, 'and the company makes all the profit.'...Mass resignation might be an extreme tactic, but a growing number of editors worry that inflated costs will keep their journals from reaching a scholarly audience, said Daniel Greenstein, librarian for systemwide planning at the University of California. 'We're seeing a lot more of this happening as faculty begin to understand their role in the commercial aspect of the journal business,' he said." (PS: See my list of other cases of mass resignation.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/09/2004 08:13:00 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.
