Now we know first-hand: Editorial board of librarians resign over journal publisher’s restrictive licensing | Omega Alpha | Open Access

"The entire editorial board of the Journal of Library Administration, published by the Taylor & Francis Group, has resigned in protest over the publisher’s restrictive author licensing policies. Brian Mathews, who was preparing a special issue of JLA on library futures as guest editor, reported the mass resignation (including the text of the board’s statement) this last weekend on his The Ubiquitous Librarian blog. In the post, Mathews also linked to a post from Chris Bourg, one of the former board members, and from Jason Griffey, who earlier declined to participate in Mathews’s project due to pointed reservations regarding T&F’s author policies. Editorial boards resigning in protest over publisher policies is not new (see the Open Access Directory’s “Journal declarations of independence” page [Update: I should have clarified that this page lists not only boards that resigned but who also took their journals [or replacements] into a less restrictive publishing environment, including open access.]). Indeed, just this last October, the editorial board of the journal Organization & Environment (SAGE) resigned over allegations of publisher intrusion on the journal’s academic freedom (see article in Inside High ED from October 29, 2012). What is interesting is how this issue has arrived at the door steps of libraries with new force and nuanced complexion. Once upon a time, it was sufficient that libraries played their primary role in providing access to information resources for 'the many' who might not (OK, let’s just say they simply wouldn’t) be able to afford on their own. Publishers have never been happy with this, though occasionally they grant the marketing value of libraries—helping them sell books by enhancing public awareness. Publishers have apparently been smarter with journals, pricing institutional subscriptions based on the assumption that one (print) copy received into the library would be accessed/read by 'the many.' I’m not exactly sure how they pulled that off. Can you imagine a generalized institutional pricing system for book purchases? (Actually, I can. Kevin Smith reported here and here on the recent decision of the Supreme Court in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons. Had the Court ruled in favor of the publisher, libraries could have faced precisely this kind of institutional pricing system. He says libraries 'dodged a bullet' with this decision. But I digress.) Perhaps libraries thought, in our typically good-natured way, that it was reasonable for publishers to ask more based on this assumption. The problem with this calculus was run-away subscription pricing. Publishers reasoned they had captive customers in the libraries, and that 'the many' would protest loudly if access was jeopardized. Problem was, while the demand was presumed to be inelastic, the budget also proved to be inelastic. We have been watching this story play-out for at least the last 30 years now ... This latest incident is a signal that something has changed in Libraryland, and librarians are awakening to it. It’s not only that we’ve been increasingly priced-out of providing access to many important and high-demand resources for our patrons. The BIG change, of course, is the whole paradigm shift in publishing from print to electronic, which includes the birth of a mode of 'democratic publishing' available to anyone on the web. With this change has come the prospect of alternatives—alternatives to publishers, and (frankly) alternatives to libraries ... Something else has changed in this shift. Academic authors are starting to discover that they wield significant power in their research products. They don’t need to sell their souls for the right to be published. It’s no longer the publisher with a printing press that wields all the power, or makes all the rules. With alternatives abounding, the truth has been exposed that publishers desperately need author content in order to stay in business. Authors are starting to demand a more equitable relationship, or they’ll take their business elsewhere ... Better late than never, astute libraries, too, are beginning to realize that it needs to be our business to care about authors, including advocating for them regarding intellectual property rights. The irony in this incident is that library researchers as academic authors are now being sensitized to the no longer acceptable practices of publishers in this regard. Creative libraries, too, are beginning to reach out to authors in the provision of direct publishing services, promising to by-pass traditional publishers altogether.  Brian Mathews, who was preparing his special issue of JLA as guest editor before all this blew-up, said he was asked why he didn’t just take the project to an open access journal. His answer was curious. 'The reason I agreed to take on the guest editorship of this issue was specifically because it was in a traditional journal and distributed by a traditional publisher. I like the idea of taki