bjoern.brembs.blog » Your university is definitely paying too much for journals

"There is an interesting study out in the journal PNAS: 'Evaluating big deal journal bundles'. The study details the disparity in negotiation skills between different US institutions when haggling with publishers about subscription pricing. For Science Magazine, John Bohannon of 'journal sting' fame, wrote a news article about the study, which did not really help him gain any respect back from all that he lost with his ill-fated sting-piece. While the study itself focused on journal pricing among US-based institutions, Bohannon’s news article, where one would expect a little broader perspective than in the commonly more myopic original papers, fails to mention that even the ‘best’ big deals are grossly overcharging the taxpayer. Here is the figure of the article, apparently provided by the PNAS authors ..."