Open Letter to the management of the publisher Taylor & Francis | SCONUL

ab1630's bookmarks 2018-02-14

Summary:

13 February 2018. Dear Mr Chesher and colleagues,

We write as representatives of the academic library community within the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. We wish to state our opposition to the proposed change of contract for the licensing and access to the Taylor & Francis journal package presently available to universities and colleges.

Taylor and Francis has been a respected publisher and a producer of many quality journals which have been purchased and licensed over the years to academic institutions. A partnership approach has proved to be important for academic authors, editors, the publisher and libraries to enable efficient dissemination of academic research.  It is therefore surprising that the current Taylor & Francis licensing offer does not appear to be in the interest of universities and their researchers nor the interests of Taylor & Francis.

A “moving wall” approach for non-subscribed titles within the journal package will increase administration activities and costs substantially for libraries and for Taylor & Francis, impose direct additional licensing costs, and create confusion and annoyance for your customers and our reader communities. In each previous licence agreement we have resourced “big deal” access for the current year and for the period back to 1997, the beginning of the born digital record. Diminishing this coverage is opportunistic and potentially profiteering within a sector which is recognised to enjoy substantial profit margins at present as it greatly monetises the outputs and inputs of publicly-funded research.

This change in purchasing model continues to be pursued by Taylor & Francis against our guidance and wishes. This is not how valued customers are treated.  We further observe that professional and learned societies which publish via Taylor & Francis will be equally concerned about the placement of their volumes in a restricted archive that cannot be accessed any longer by conventionally licensed institutions. This is likely to lead to less use and fewer citations for this material. We continue to fail to see how this is in your interests.

We understand that Taylor & Francis have been selective in not imposing this change throughout its global client base. We strongly urge you to reconsider this approach for the UK, as soon as possible, and return to the accepted model of licensing digital material, largely since 1997, in a single accessible format.

Yours sincerely,..."

Link:

https://www.sconul.ac.uk/page/open-letter-to-the-management-of-the-publisher-taylor-francis

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » ab1630's bookmarks

Tags:

oa.new oa.libraries oa.librarians oa.taylor&francis oa.signatures oa.hei oa.paywalls oa.big_deals oa.access oa.prices oa.profits oa.taxpayers oa.uk

Date tagged:

02/14/2018, 15:21

Date published:

02/14/2018, 10:21