Rewriting the Journal -- Campus Technology

Use the link to access the full text article.  “This spring, more than 12,000 science, math, and humanities researchers signed an online petition against the academic publisher Elsevier, pledging not to publish in, referee for, or edit Elsevier journals. The protest, sometimes referred to as the Academic Spring, is the most public manifestation of growing unhappiness with the giant publisher over a number of issues. As the name of the petition website--The Cost of Knowledge--suggests, academics accuse Elsevier of charging exorbitant rates for individual journal subscriptions, forcing libraries to buy journals in bundles that include titles they don't even want.  On top of that, Elsevier stands accused of trying ‘to restrict the free exchange of information’ through its support of legislation such as SOPA, PIPA, and the Research Workers Act...  The petition was launched on the heels of a blog post by Timothy Gowers, a Fields Medal-winning mathematician at the University of Cambridge(UK), who first griped publicly about Elsevier's practices. ‘If you publish in Elsevier journals you are making it easier for Elsevier to take action that harms academic institutions, so you shouldn't,’ Gowers wrote.  The protest has definitely had an impact. On Feb. 27, a month after The Cost of Knowledge site launched, Elsevier announced that it was withdrawing support for the Research Works Act... The company also agreed to lower per-article and journal prices and to allow open access to more of its archives.  But how much has really changed? While the boycott managed to extract some concessions from the publisher, the Elsevier saga also served to focus attention on the broader world of academic publishing. And, by many accounts, it's an unbalanced world indeed, with commercial publishers taking research, editing, and peer reviews provided for free by scholars and selling it back to the community at prices many can't afford.  Until recently, researchers have largely been insulated from the pricing strategies of commercial publishers, since their school libraries have been able to pay the high subscription fees, which range from a few hundred dollars to more than $5,000 per year, depending on the title. The situation is not sustainable, however, with librarians contending that journal prices ‘continue to rise well beyond the rate of inflation and beyond the Consumer Price Index,’ says Michael Boock, head of the Center for Digital Scholarship and Services at Oregon State University Libraries.  Publishers initially explained away high book and journal prices as being necessary to help build their digital-publishing platforms, but, Boock points out, ‘that migration happened a long time ago now...’  Unfortunately, scholars are caught in a classic catch-22. As part of the career-advancement structure in higher education, they must place their work in high-profile journals or risk being passed over for hire, tenure, or promotion.  Obviously, university libraries are no strangers to one of the most popular online alternatives, the open-access archive. These archives enable scholars to upload work--including drafts of articles that are published later in subscription journals--so they can be accessed for free by the public. Members of the Oregon State University community, for example, can add their work to ScholarsArchive@OSU, which provides full-text search, long-term hosting, and view and download statistics for the work.  Cornell University Library owns arXiv.org, one of the most popular--and populated--open-access archives, with more than 750,000 articles... Even so, ArXiv isn't a publishing mechanism--it's a means for sharing. Its mission is to open up a tremendous body of scientific research...”