[ANPPOM-Lista] the harvard memorandum on journal pricing

[Carlos Palombini]

Faculty Advisory Council Memorandum on Journal Pricing
     Major Periodical Subscriptions Cannot Be Sustained

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   To: Faculty Members in all Schools, Faculties, and Units
From: The Faculty Advisory
Council<http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k77982&panel=icb.pagecontent5%3Ar%241&pageid=icb.page420599&pageContentId=icb.pagecontent5>
Date: April 17, 2012
RE: Periodical Subscriptions

We write to communicate an untenable situation facing the Harvard Library.
Many large journal publishers have made the scholarly communication
environment fiscally unsustainable and academically restrictive. This
situation is exacerbated by efforts of certain publishers (called
“providers”) to acquire, bundle, and increase the pricing on journals.

Harvard’s annual cost for journals from these providers now approaches
$3.75M. In 2010, the comparable amount accounted for more than 20% of
*all*periodical subscription costs and just under 10% of
*all* collection costs for everything the Library acquires. Some journals
cost as much as $40,000 per year, others in the tens of thousands. Prices
for online content from two providers have increased by about 145% over the
past six years, which far exceeds not only the consumer price index, but
also the higher education and the library price indices. These journals
therefore claim an ever-increasing share of our overall collection budget.
Even though scholarly output continues to grow and publishing can be
expensive, profit margins of 35% and more suggest that the prices we must
pay do not solely result from an increasing supply of new articles.

The Library has never received anything close to full reimbursement for
these expenditures from overhead collected by the University on grant and
research funds.

The Faculty Advisory Council to the Library, representing university
faculty in all schools and in consultation with the Harvard Library
leadership,  reached this conclusion: major periodical subscriptions,
especially to electronic journals published by historically key providers,
cannot be sustained: continuing these subscriptions on their current
footing is financially untenable. Doing so would seriously erode collection
efforts in many other areas, already compromised.

It is untenable for contracts with at least two major providers to continue
on the basis identical with past agreements. Costs are now prohibitive.
Moreover, some providers bundle many journals as one subscription, with
major, high-use journals bundled in with journals consulted far less
frequently. Since the Library now must change its subscriptions and since
faculty and graduate students are chief users, please consider the
following options open to faculty and students (F) and the Library (L),
state other options you think viable, and communicate your
views<HLjournals em harvard.edu>
:

1. Make sure that all of your own papers are accessible by submitting them
to DASH in accordance with the faculty-initiated open-access policies (F).

2. Consider submitting articles to open-access journals, or to ones that
have reasonable, sustainable subscription costs; move prestige to open
access (F).

3. If on the editorial board of a journal involved, determine if it can be
published as open access material, or independently from publishers that
practice pricing described above. If not, consider resigning (F).

4. Contact professional organizations to raise these issues (F).

5. Encourage professional associations to take control of scholarly
literature in their field or shift the management of their e-journals to
library-friendly organizations (F).

6. Encourage colleagues to consider and to discuss these or other options
(F).

7. Sign contracts that unbundle subscriptions and concentrate on higher-use
journals (L).

 8. Move journals to a sustainable pay per use system, (L).

9. Insist on subscription contracts in which the terms can be made public
(L).
-- 
carlos palombini
www.researcherid.com/rid/F-7345-2011
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