Canadian University Hopes to Lead Fight Against High Subscription Prices - Publishing - The Chronicle of Higher Education

More on the University of Prince Edward Island decision to cancel Thomson's Web of Science. "[T]he university librarian, Mark Leggott, released a campus letter to let the faculty know the institution would not be renewing its subscription....Tellingly, the letter cites the recent standoff between the University of California system and the Nature Publishing Group over journal prices...."We have a tendency to keep our negotiations confidential and quiet, and I think it's the most egregious process we can follow," Mr. Leggott told me. "We have been silent for way too long in letting it be known that this kind of scholarly publishing process is not sustainable." ... Mr. Leggott sees the Web of Science decision as an opportunity "to raise awareness around all these issues and see if there's any interest in building a different kind of approach." What he has in mind is "a Wikipedia-type index to scholarly literature" called Knowledge for All. Open source and freely available, the index would be built and maintained by libraries—not just UPEI's but as many as are willing to pitch in...."