University of California's break with the biggest academic publisher could shake up scholarly publishing for good

peter.suber's bookmarks 2019-03-09

Summary:

"The University of California recently made international headlines when it canceled its subscription with scientific journal publisher Elsevier. The twittersphere lit up. And Elsevier’s parent company, RELX, saw its stock drop 7 percent in response to the announcement.

A library canceling a subscription seems like a simple, everyday business decision, so what’s the big deal?

It was not just the clash-of-the-titans drama between the University of California, whose scholars produce nearly 10 percent of the nation’s research publications, and Elsevier, the world’s largest publisher of academic research.

The story made headlines because it’s symptomatic of the way in which the internet has failed to deliver on the promise to make knowledge easily accessible and shareable by anyone, anywhere in the world. The UC-Elsevier showdown was the latest in a succession of cracks in what is widely considered to be a failing system for sharing academic research. As the head of the research library at UC Davis, I see this development as a harbinger of a tectonic shift in how universities and their faculty share research, build reputations and preserve knowledge in the digital age...."

Link:

https://theconversation.com/university-of-californias-break-with-the-biggest-academic-publisher-could-shake-up-scholarly-publishing-for-good-112941

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » peter.suber's bookmarks

Tags:

oa.new oa.u.california oa.elsevier oa.cancellations

Date tagged:

03/09/2019, 10:40

Date published:

03/09/2019, 05:40