Four Minnesota private colleges (Carleton, Gustavus Adolphus,
Macalester, and St. Olaf) have independently decided to decline a
three year renewal of Science Direct through our regional cooperative,
MINITEX. Through a MINITEX subsidy of this e-journal bundle our
schools enjoyed access to full text of over 700 e-journals for the
past three years, but find we cannot justify renewal of this deal for
another three years.
While the reasons and decision processes were somewhat different on
each campus, we are all convinced that the escalating prices for many
scientific journals are unsustainable and that the time has come for
change. (It is not just Reed-Elsevier’s Science Direct package that
employs an unsustainable pricing model.) For each of us the
disproportionate amount spent for a small percentage of scientific
journals was negatively affecting our ability to build a balanced
liberal arts college collection. We are moving to reduce the
disproportionate impact on our budgets of a few large commercial
publishers. In declining the Science Direct offer we have elected to
retain the ability to cancel high price/low value journals in favor of
titles that offer greater value and promote business models consistent
with the interests of our institutions.
Our faculties are aware that this decision will result in a painful
reduction in a overall journal access in the short term. But they are
supporting us because they understand that it is in the long term
interests of our institutions to reassert control over our collections
and to encourage new, more sustainable publishing models. Scientists
now recognize that this is not a "library problem", but a broader
crisis in scholarly communication. Open access journals are a clear
alternative to the unsustainable bundling of journals, which prohibits
cancellations and which consistently increase at rates of 5-8% per year.
We are working with other colleges and universities to address this
crisis by supporting the work of SPARC (insert link), Public Library
of Science (insert link), and other groups that seek to increase broad
and cost-effective access to peer reviewed scholarship. In declining
the Science Direct offer we are joining an increasing number of
institutions (insert link) signaling that we are serious in our
demands for reasonable pricing for scholarly communication.
In addition, on each campus we are beginning to increase outreach
efforts to encourage our administrations and faculties to engage in
discussions related to scholarly communication, and to evaluate
publishing alternatives, including the open access model.
Specifically, we are encouraging our college communities to consider:
-avoiding publishing and reviewing for journals that are not moving
towards an open access model,
-retaining the right to distribute the results of their research broadly,
-establishing institutional archives,
-engaging in conversation about open access within departments,
campus-wide, with legislators and policy-makers, and in their
scholarly and scientific societies, and
-adopting policies that signal that publication in quality open access
journals is acceptable in the institutions’ system of rewards and
recognition.
Sam Demas, Carleton College
Terri Fishel, Macalester College
Bryn Geffert, St. Olaf College
Dan Mollner, Gustavus Adolphus College
May 2004
Received on Wed May 19 2004 - 10:22:25 EDT