University Library Ditches ACS

In protest against high-priced journal packages, the library at SUNY Potsdam will end its subscription to American Chemical Society online journal package.

Written byBob Grant

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University librarians have long complained that some scientific publishers offer package deals, in which several of their titles—both essential and less august—are made available for an exorbitant fee. Now, the director of libraries for the State University of New York (SUNY) Potsdam has taken a stand on the issue. Jenica Rogers, along with her colleagues at the small college, decided to drop their subscription to the online journal package offered by the American Chemical Society (ACS), starting in 2013.

Rogers explained, in her blog Attempting Elegance, that SUNY Potsdam will instead use a combination of Royal Society of Chemistry content, ACS single title subscriptions, the ACS backfile, and ScienceDirect from Elsevier (a publisher she is also "displeased" with, but is not allowed to opt out of the contract). Though unable to give exact numbers for the pricing model that she called "unsustainable," Rogers wrote that "the ACS package would have ...

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Meet the Author

Bob Grant
From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
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