Open and Shut?: The Open Access Interviews: Richard Savory, Jisc Licensing Manager
pontika.nancy@gmail.com's bookmarks 2014-12-16
Summary:
"For the past several decades the research community has been bedevilled with the so-called serials crisis, the phenomenon by which the cost of scholarly journals continues to rise at an unsustainable rate ... What I take from the Q&A is that whether or not publishers insist on non-disclosure clauses makes little difference theoretically, since the details may in any case never be revealed (unless someone undertakes the laborious task of submitting scores of FoI requests). This seems evident from what Savory says below — even where there is no legal gag, he explains, those entering into an agreement with a publisher may not feel able to divulge the fine details for reasons of 'commercial sensitivity' (i.e. publishers do not want their competitors to have this information). This reluctance, he adds, flows from the fact that divulging the information could 'put an unnecessary obstacle in the path of a publisher’s willingness to enter into an agreement with us'. But we should not conclude from all this that Jisc itself prefers secrecy. When Estelle told Research in October that she would not reveal the offsetting formula for the two publishers Jisc was negotiating with, explains Savory, the organisation was still consulting HEIs about the deal, and so any public comment would have been premature ..."