Support for UC-Nature ban

University of California scientists are speaking out in favor of UC's threat to boycott Nature Publishing Group over a proposed 400 percent hike in licensing fees. "Nature is making a very unfortunate move here," said linkurl:Alex Bell,;http://www.cchem.berkeley.edu/atbgrp/research.html a professor of chemical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. "Multiple-fold increases are unjustified. I think it's bordering on exploitation." In a letter mass e-mailed to faculty earlier this week and linkurl:posted on the UC Libraries website,;http://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/2010/06/09/letter-to-uc-faculty-on-nature-publishing-group-subscription-increases/ the California Digital Library and the University Committee on Library and Scholarly Communications say the school is facing an "impending crisis," a proposed licensing price hike that would raise the cost for 67 Nature Publishing Group (NPG) journals by well over $1 million per year. The proposed new fees come at a time when UC libraries are in an economic pinch and worked all last year to reduce their electronic journal costs by $1 million per year. UC libraries currently pay $4,465 on average per NPG journal. The 2011 proposed average cost would be $17,479 per journal. UC authors create a "huge amount" of content for NPG journals, said linkurl:Rich Schneider,;http://orthosurg.ucsf.edu/Richard.Schneider a molecular biologist at UCSF and chair of the University Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication: In the last six years, they contributed about 5,300 articles to NPG journals, including 638 in Nature alone, according to the UC letter. "We feel like we should get a fair discount for our services," said Schneider. "Other institutions are paying much too much as well." Negotiations between the California Digital Library (CDL) and NPG stalled at a meeting earlier this month. Now, if NPG does not re-negotiate the new pricing, "more drastic actions will be necessary," the letter states. If the publisher does not relent, UC Libraries are planning to forgo all online subscriptions to Nature and its affiliated journals, and will "strongly encourage" UC faculty to implement a boycott -- not submitting, editing, or peer reviewing manuscripts for NPG and refraining from advertising in Nature journals. The move is similar to a 2003 effort, in which UC successfully boycotted Elsevier when they tried to linkurl:raise Cell Press licensing costs.;http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA379265.html This morning, NPG issued a response to the letter, linkurl:posted on their website.;http://www.nature.com/press_releases/cdl.html The letter came as a "shock," the publishers write, misrepresenting pricing policies while using data out of context. UC Libraries currently receive an unsustainable 88 percent discount off list price, NPG argues, causing other subscribers to subsidize the University. The rise in costs reflects an attempt to bring the discount closer to 50 percent. "We will not be bullied into continuing CDL's subsidy by our other customers," says NPG. "We're not talking about list price -- nobody pays list price," responded Schneider. "We're talking about the amount of money that we actually pay, and nobody can expect a 400 percent increase in a single year," he said. "That is just completely unreasonable." UC librarians have received hundreds of reactions, said Schneider, which have been overwhelmingly supportive. Campus librarians will be compiling the comments to discuss before any additional actions are taken, he added. "There is no boycott yet," he said. "We just want people to be ready that something could happen. Hopefully it doesn't get to that point." The threat of losing NPG subscriptions will likely encourage faculty to pay more attention to scholarly communication in general, including the high prices of subscriptions and the idea of open access publishing, said linkurl:Philip Bourne,;http://www.sdsc.edu/pb/ a computational biologist at UCSD and self-proclaimed open access advocate, who will support the boycott if it moves forward. "It's time to think seriously about what we're doing here. There's over emphasis on being in a top tier journal versus making the work more accessible to a larger group of people," said Bourne, who is editor-in-chief of the open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology. "Nature and every other journal depends on leading scholars contributing their work, and we do this all for free," added Bell, who has published in and been a reviewer for Nature journals in the past. "Then our institutions have to pay to buy the intellectual property back. It's kind of an outrageous situation." Editor's update: UC has linkurl:published a response;http://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/UC_Response_to_Nature_Publishing_Group.pdf to NPG's public statement.
**__Related stories:__***linkurl:Nature to aid open access;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/54823/
[8th July 2008]*linkurl: Open access brings more citations;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/23448/
[16th May 2006]

Support for UC-Nature ban

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