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University of California Boycotts Publishing Giant Elsevier Over Journal Costs and Open Access:
The mammoth University of California (UC) system announced today that it will stop paying to subscribe to journals published by Elsevier, the world’s largest scientific publisher. Talks to renew a collective contract broke down, the university said, because Elsevier refused to strike a package deal that would provide a break on subscription fees and make all articles published by UC authors immediately free for readers worldwide.
The stand by UC, which followed eight months of negotiations, could have significant impacts on scientific communication and the direction of the so-called open access movement, in the United States and beyond. The 10-campus system accounts for nearly 10 percent of all U.S. publishing output and is among the first American institutions, and by far the largest, to boycott Elsevier over costs. Many administrators and librarians at American universities and elsewhere have complained about what they view as excessively high journal subscription fees charged by commercial publishers.
“It’s hard to overstate how big [UC’s move] is for us here in the U.S.,” says Heather Joseph, executive director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, a Washington D.C.-based group that advocates for open access. “This gives institutions that are on the fence about taking this kind of action a blueprint.”
Indeed, UC’s move could ratchet up pressure on additional negotiations facing Elsevier and other commercial publishers; consortia of universities and labs in Germany and Sweden had already reached an impasse last year with Elsevier in their efforts to lower subscription fees.
[...] UC published about 50,000 articles last year, and a substantial share, about 10,000, appeared in Elsevier journals. For subscriptions and article fees, UC paid about $11 million, the Los Angeles Times reported recently. (UC says the information is confidential under a non-disclosure agreement.)
There are still many other institutions which continue to purchase subscriptions to these journals. How far away are we from reaching a tipping point?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2019, @11:28AM (5 children)
Um, all of them? UC does a lot of research in a lot of different fields.
Don't throw shade at UC's productivity just because the last "research" you did was double check how long your hotpocket was supposed to be in the microwave.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2019, @11:50AM
Important stuff, like... University of California, Berkeley, synthetic biologists have engineered brewer's yeast to produce marijuana's main ingredients.
And... Seti
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2019, @01:18PM (2 children)
Ah, I forgot about the all important advancement in running pump and dumps they discovered called crispr. Last I checked no one was publishing how many cells survived the treatment anymore, that was like a year ago now though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2019, @03:36PM (1 child)
Nothing is stopping you from researching and reporting on it.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2019, @05:30PM
For what benefit? I want them to continue with it.
I did my research... started shorting those stocks (EDIT, CRSP, NTLA) and made money when they all dropped ~50% as everyone was surprised they were selecting for cancer-prone cells, etc.
I hope someone decides to pump them again so I get another opportunity to do the same.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday March 01 2019, @03:50PM
The savings not paid for these journals will be invested into the fields used for athletic sports.
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