Stickybuffalo.com

the astronomical prices being charged for academic journals isn’t exactly news, but university libraries refusing to pay them is.

university of california libraries said “fuck that” when the Nature Publishing Group decided to quadruple their license fees in the middle of a budget crisis: the UC says it’ll drop all 67 of its subscriptions if the publisher doesn’t back off.

that’s a serious punch to the grapes for Nature — $23.4 million in online journals alone. the UC system is huge, and it’s about time they flex some of that economic muscle. but that’s only part of the leverage big universities have over academic publishers.

Using NPG’s own figures, an analysis by CDL suggests that UC articles published in Nature alone have contributed at least $19 million dollars in revenue to NPG over the past 6 years—or more than $3 million dollars per year for just that one journal. Moreover, UC Faculty supply countless hours serving as reviewers, editors, and advisory board members.

…[U]nless NPG is willing to maintain our current licensing agreement, UC Faculty would ask the UC Libraries to suspend their online subscriptions entirely, and all UC Faculty would be strongly encouraged to:

• Decline to peer review manuscripts for journals from the Nature Publishing Group.
• Resign from Nature Publishing Group editorial and advisory boards.
• Cease to submit papers to the Nature Publishing Group.
• Refrain from advertising any open or new UC positions in Nature Publishing Group journals.
• Talk widely about Nature Publishing Group pricing tactics and business strategies with colleagues outside UC, and encourage sympathy actions such as those listed above.

uh oh! looks like somebody figured out that publishers benefit a lot more from the work of academics than the other way around. this could make things very, very unpleasant for Nature.

the last bullet point is especially exciting. i want to see this become a nationwide movement — in my fantasy, it leads to the foundation of some kind of academic commons. faculty already know that commercial publishing is a terrible model for disseminating their work and staying current in the field, and one that’s obviated by the web. they’re not making money publishing their work in journals (most of them, anyway), though they’re obligated to publish for purposes of tenure and career advancement. administrators, meanwhile, have been jolted out of their complacency by the deluge of red ink and are suddenly open to ideas they wouldn’t have entertained not so long ago. the time is right for bold action against IP monopolies, and public institutions of higher education have the resources to make some big changes to the way we circulate and share knowledge.

go librarians!