Elsevier’s David Tempest explains subscription-contract confidentiality clauses | Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week

"As we all know, University libraries have to pay expensive subscription fees to scholarly publishers such as Elsevier, Springer, Wiley and Informa, so that their researchers can read articles written by their colleagues and donated to those publishers. Controversially (and maybe illegally), when negotiating contracts with libraries, publishers often insist on confidentiality clauses — so that librarians are not allowed to disclose how much they are paying. The result is an opaque market with no downward pressure on prices, hence the current outrageously high prices, which are rising much more quickly than inflation even as publishers’ costs shrink due to the transition to electronic publishing. On Thursday 11 April 2013, Oxford University hosted a conference called Rigour and Openness in 21st Century Science. The evening event was a debate on the subject Evolution or Revolution In Science Communication. During this debate, Stephen Curry of Imperial College noted that his librarian isn’t allowed to tell him how much they pay for Elsevier journals. This is the response of David Tempest, Elsevier’s Deputy Director of Universal Sustainable Research Access ... Curry [in reference to the previous answer]: 'I’m glad David Tempest is so interested in librarians being able to make costs transparent to their users, because at my university, Imperial College, my chief librarian can not tell me how much she pays for Elsevier journals because she’s bound by a confidentiality clause. Would you like to address that?'  [Loud applause for the question]   Tempest: 'Well, indeed there are confidentiality clauses inherent in the system, in our Freedom Collections. The Freedom Collections do give a lot of choice and there is a lot of discount in there to the librarians. And the use, and the cost per use has been dropping dramatically, year on year. And so we have to ensure that, in order to have fair competition between different countries, that we have this level of confidentiality to make that work. Otherwise everybody would drive down, drive down, drive drive drive, and that would mean that …'  [The last  part is drowned in the laughter of the audience.]  So there you have it: confidentiality clauses exist because otherwise everybody would drive down prices. And we can’t have that, can we? ..."