[Reading-hall-of-fame] Re: This is a memo from our Provost about the rising cost of electronic journals.

[Brian Cambourne]

Thanks for sharing this information David.
I think the problem you’ve identified is what motivated Denny Taylor to start her Garn publishing enterprise.

Her aim is to provide a platform for academics to get their work published and disseminated as quickly and cheaply as possible, both in book and/or electronic formats.
 She might be worth contacting.
 Brian Cambourne.

On 9 Feb 2018, at 5:13 AM, P Pearson <ppearson at berkeley.edu<mailto:ppearson at berkeley.edu>> wrote:

I think that this development within the publishing industry--and we see it with Sage, Elvesier, Taylor and Francis in our own field--will eventually drive academia into some sort of low cost electronic publishing enterprise of its own. After all, we do the research, write the manuscripts, edit the journals, and assign the readings.  And the publishers are capitalizing on a lot of free labor only to charge us, the producers, exorbitant rates that far exceed production costs.

Note that the more journals we start (in order to accommodate more publications by ourselves) the more we contribute to the problem. It is little wonder then that many faculty and students try to beat the system with bootleg distribution of articles.  But then again, that just motivates publishers to jack up the prices even more.

Whoever said that academics were not naive?
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From our UCB provost:

Colleagues,

The University Library is undertaking a $1 million reduction in expenditures to purchase or license scholarly resources.  We would like to explain why, and then seek your participation in the process.

For many years, market power in the scholarly publishing industry has been increasing.  As a consequence, the price of scholarly resources has been increasing faster than general inflation: in recent years, journal and monograph prices at a rate of 3-5% per year.  In addition, journal publishers are proliferating the number of journals published, many of inferior quality.  The combined effect is a persistent and rapid increase in the cost of scholarly resources.  We cannot spend an ever increasing share of campus funds on journals and books unless we are willing to spend less in other areas (such as faculty compensation).  Harvard University described this as an “untenable situation” and “fiscally unsustainable” in 2012.  Berkeley is in no better position.  Thus, we continuously review, and necessarily reduce our licensing of journals and acquisition of books.

To complicate matters, in the past year, like all units across campus, the Library faced a sizable cut in campus funds.

The $1 million reduction in licensing and acquisitions is a necessary response to the combination of the ongoing exploitation by publishers, and the current year’s permanent reduction in campus funding.

A call for comment, issued by the University Library, encourages all interested parties to carefully review a list of proposed serial cancellations and to share comments and recommendations. (For more information see the Library’s guide<http://guides.lib.berkeley.edu/c.php?g=706910&p=5020003> and savings proposal<http://guides.lib.berkeley.edu/scholarly-resources/proposed-savings>.) The proposed cancellations were identified after careful evidence-based balancing of needs and costs. The comment per iod is open through Friday, April 6. We invite you to submit comments via email to scholarly-resources at lists.berkeley.edu<mailto:scholarly-resources at lists.berkeley.edu> or directly with your subject librarian<http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/help/subject-specialists>.

The Library regrets that it must implement this reduction. Providing access to scholarly resources is one of the Library’s core services, but the sequence of recent budget cuts and cost increases have necessitated reductions in all of its core services. The Library will continue to serve campus as a public good that benefits the entire Berkeley community — connecting researchers with an impressive breadth and depth of materials.

--
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
P. David Pearson
Evelyn Lois Corey Emeritus Professor of Instructional Science
and Professor of the Graduate School
Graduate School of Education
5645 Tolman Hall #1670
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley CA 94720-1670
GSE Office: 510 6543 6508
fax 510-642-4799
email:  ppearson at berkeley.edu<mailto:ppearson at berkeley.edu>
other e-mail:  pdavidpearsondean at gmail.com<mailto:pdavidpearsondean at gmail.com>
website for presentations:  www.scienceandliteracy.org<http://www.scienceandliteracy.org/>
website for publications:
https://bspace.berkeley.edu/portal/site/~189290/page/fc6f1431-1058-4118-80f1-9249dd68c3b6
*******************
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Assoc. Prof. ( Dr) Brian Cambourne
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