Union backs Elsevier boycott

“THE Australian academic union has injected new energy into the campaign against journal giant Reed Elsevier’s business model.The National Tertiary Education Union is urging members to consider signing up for the ‘Cost of Knowledge’ international boycott and ‘deny their academic labour to Elsevier.’ ‘NTEU is aware the decision to boycott is difficult for many local academics, given research funding in Australia is awarded on the basis of work published in journals judged to have the most impact,’ union president Jeannie Rea says... ‘While we understand that the process of publishing and disseminating research costs money, every effort should be made to ensure research funded for and by tax payers is also available to them at reasonable cost. On the evidence we are not convinced Elsevier is making these efforts.’The NTEU declaration follows the National Health and Medical Research Council’s decision last week to require the open source publication within 12 months of all research it funds. While academics have long objected to the oligopoly of Elsevier and others, a manifesto by mathematician Timothy Gowers catalysed the current campaign. Gowers argues organisations like Elsevier take advantage of academics being too busy to create independent journals and too polite to say no to academic colleagues who ask them to referee for a company publication. However as the internet makes it possible for scholars to produce their own journals exploitation by Elsevier is no longer unavoidable, he says...”