Cornell Library Rejects Non-Disclosures On Journal Pricing; Will Reveal All Prices
from the go-big-red dept
One of the more pernicious areas of locking up knowledge that we've seen and discussed involves academic journals. These tend to involve private publishers who get a tremendous amount of completely free labor in terms of content submissions and even reviewers/editors... and then demand the copyrights of the research, while charging universities ridiculously high fees. Those publishers have also gone to great lengths to try to block the US government from trying to make federally funded research available to the public at no cost after a limited amount of time. And, of course, the journals often rely on secrecy to get the most money -- including requiring universities to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) that forbid them from revealing how much they're paying for a journal.It's nice to see some universities really starting to push back, and it's even nicer when it's a university that I attended and from which I received two degrees. My sister informs me that Cornell University has decided to take a stand and is refusing to sign any NDAs from various journals, and will make the prices they're being charged for such journals public. As the University made clear in a statement about this policy, it feels these agreements go against the basic nature of openness and fairness:
It has become apparent to the library community that the anticompetitive conduct engaged in by some publishing firms is in part a result of the inclusion of nondisclosure agreements in contracts. As Robert Darnton recently noted, by "keeping the terms secret, ... one library cannot negotiate for cheaper rates by citing an advantage obtained by another library." For this reason, the International Coalition of Library Consortia's "Statement of Current Perspective and Preferred Practices for the Selection and Purchase of Electronic Information" states that "Non-disclosure language should not be required for any licensing agreement, particularly language that would preclude library consortia from sharing pricing and other significant terms and conditions with other consortia." The more that libraries are able to communicate with one another about vendor offers, the better they are able to weigh the costs and benefits of any individual offer. An open market will result in better licensing terms.The next step is focusing more and more on truly open journals and increasing their acceptance in academia.
Additionally, nondisclosure agreements conflict with the needs of CUL librarians and staff to work openly, collaboratively, and transparently. This conflict increases the likelihood that the terms of a nondisclosure agreement would be inadvertently violated, posing a threat to the university
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Filed Under: journals, knowledge, learning, nda, openness, prices
Companies: cornell
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Why isn't that the first step? Oh, because on Techdirt it's easier and more emotionally satisfying to tear down the old instead of doing the hard work of building up the new. Creative destruction has two parts.
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Re: why isn't that the first step?
Rejecting NDAs for closed journals and supporting open journals are not mutually exclusive actions. Cornell simply chose to reject NDAs first.
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Re:
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Journals
The researchers do not realize they can simply depart en-masse to the new online systems, and leave the old school over-ripe and dying on the vine.
If they decamp en-masse, in 2 years it will have settled into the new way. This gradualism is a form of failing to grasp the nettle.
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Next step
If they have leverage (as they do with their size and prestige), they should use it in the interest of openness and transparency to help their students, staff, and owners get a better deal.
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Outside looking in
It seems to me that generations of lawyers can be enriched on this tussle...some criminal...
Nontheless, the nettle must be grasped firmly and decisively by all the groups at once, only then will none get stung
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Then these works are peer reviewed *for free* by other esteemed researchers in the field.
So the journals receive article and proofreading at zero cost, so their marginal cost is literally zero. They just need to support a small staff to collect and publish this content.
Then they go out and charge several hundred dollars for a yearly subscription and probably a lot more to a school library, but it's hard to get a number on that with the NDAs. I'm sure this started out as a simply economic equation with such a small audience that they needed high prices simply to do printing, but I think they have leveraged this into quite the nice cash cow for themselves.
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Re: Teal A/C at @ 3:37am
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If they were, don't they have a requirement to publish spending? I'm pretty sure that in the UK, you could at least ask for this information under Freedom Of Information rules?
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Response to: Julian Knight on Mar 25th, 2011 @ 7:39am
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Publishing periodicals is the third most profitable industry
http://biz.yahoo.com/p/sum_qpmd.html
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DMCA violation?
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publishing prices
So I guess "yay Cornell" for taking a stand, but the consequences aren't going to be all that helpful
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Wheels have fallen off
In the analogous manner the current journal publishing method does not see it is dead, but by dinosaurlike inertia, keeps on going down the road.
By the time they see it, will their bones be lying by the road, picked clean? Or will they adapt to this new model and adapt? Greed and avarice are alive and well, as is stupidity in these cartels, in my opinion, their future is bleak.
They will be unable to adapt to the dramatic changes in their funding model. Too many grazers on the hitherto lush grass - what will they eat in the desert to come?
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Linked to paywall
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Re: Linked to paywall
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State FOIA
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