Why are librarians hesitant to CANCEL ALL THE JOURNALS? – Confessions of a Science Librarian

"There’s lots of discussion out there right now in the twitter and blog world concerning Bjorn Brembs’ call to librarians to jumpstart the mass migration to Open Access by essentially unilaterally cancelling all the journals they subscribe to. This act would force the hands of all the various players in the ecosystem to immediately figure out how to make Open Access work. Which is a great idea. I actually kind of mused about this sort of scenario a while back in a post called An Open Access thought experiment. Except what I wasn’t smart enough or brave enough to do was imagine a scenario where it was librarians themselves who up and cancelled all the journals rather than it just happening. Why would that be? Well, I think it’s safe to say that librarians don’t feel they have the power to unilaterally cancel all their institution’s subscriptions without some fearsome retribution either from within the institution itself or from elements of the publishing world. Recently the University of Montreal’s library cancelled a big deal and seem to have gotten good support internally. So that’s hopeful. By the same token, the SUNY Potsdam library’s cancellation of the American Chemical Society a few years back seems to have had strong support internally. It was externally that the blowback happened. So that’s both good news and bad news. Most recently the situation at Brock University in Ontario is an interesting example of what librarians fear will be the outcome of any large-scale cancellation exercise. The Brock library cancelled the Wiley big deal package, with what they thought was internal support. But a firestorm ensued with ultimately the Brock Faculty Association filing an internal grievance to force the administration to fund the library at the level necessary to subscribe to the journals. The grievance has since been dropped, leaving it to the Senate to pick up the pieces, but the implication is clear. Librarians: Act boldly at your own risk. Of course, it’s not that simple ..."