Journal of Library Administration Editorial Board Resigns to Protest Restrictive Licensing

On Friday, March 22, the entire editorial board of the Journal of Library Administration resigned in protest of the restrictive licenses by its publisher, Taylor & Francis. In previous weeks the editor, Damon Jaggers, had been discussing with Taylor & Francis changing the terms of its publishing agreements. Ultimately, the publisher agreed to a less-restrictive license on a hybrid OA model, but at the cost of a $3,000 fee for authors.

News of the resignation broke on Saturday. Brian Matthews, who had been working with Mr. Damon on a special issue of JLA, provided the following excerpt from the board’s resignation statement:

The Board believes that the licensing terms in the Taylor & Francis author agreement are too restrictive and out-of-step with the expectations of authors in the LIS community. … A large and growing number of current and potential authors to JLA have pushed back on the licensing terms included in the Taylor & Francis author agreement. Several authors have refused to publish with the journal under the current licensing terms. … Authors find the author agreement unclear and too restrictive and have repeatedly requested some form of Creative Commons license in its place. … After much discussion, the only alternative presented by Taylor & Francis tied a less restrictive license to a $2995 per article fee to be paid by the author. As you know, this is not a viable licensing option for authors from the LIS community who are generally not conducting research under large grants. … Thus, the Board came to the conclusion that it is not possible to produce a quality journal under the current licensing terms offered by Taylor & Francis and chose to collectively resign.

Mr. Jaggers was also quoted in The Chronicle about the difficult decision:

When I became an editor, I did so because I really wanted to create a really forward-looking journal that would have an impact on the profession. A lot of community effort went into the journal because a lot of people believed in what we were trying to create, but it was at the point that we really couldn’t do what we wanted to do.

There is no news yet about whether or not the former JLA editorial board will take a further action, such as launching a new, OA or less restrictive journal covering library administration. Peter Suber noted that 20 previous journal editorial boards have collectively resigned and went out to launch new journals with less restrictive policies. If the former JLA editorial members were to launch their own journal, they would be the first to do so after protesting a hybrid OA journal.