[LIS-Forum] Costly journals and developing countries

Subbiah Arunachalam arun at mssrf.res.in
Sat Oct 22 06:01:16 IST 2005


Friends:

According to the University of Pennsylvania's Van Pelt Library "An annual
subscription to the chemistry journal Tetrahedron, published by Elsevier,
costs the library $31,600." I wish to ask all organic chemists, especially
those working in India, China, Brazil, South Africa, and other developing
countries, is the journal worth that price? It would be interesting to see
how many Indian researchers ACTUALLY read articles published in
Tetrahedron and quote them in their own papers. While journals of the
quality of PNASc are available absolutely free on the web, it is rather
difficult to accept that developing country libraries should subscribe to
such outrageoulsy expensive journals.

Tetrahedron was originally owned by Pergamon Press (Robert Maxwell) and
later acquired by the Elsevier group. India has several consortia
subscriptions to Elsevier's Science Direct aggregation of journals. But
very few librarians have invested the time and little effort required to
set up their own institutional open access archives, despite the excellent
model provided by the Indian Institute of Science.

Indian authors publishing in such expensive journals are unwittingly doing
a great disservice to progress of science in India. As they are so
expensive, many institutions would not subscribe to these journals and
therefore most Indian researchers will not have easy access to the papers
published in them. Thus results of reserch supported by Indian taxpayers'
money is NOT AVAILABLE to other Indian researchers.

Subbiah Arunachalam

----

>From Peter Suber's blog on OA

University of Pennsylvania cuts 2,255 subscriptions, blames price hikes

Jesse Rogers, As costs rise, library cuts journals, The Daily
Pennsylvanian, October 20, 2005. Excerpt:

    Students combing the stacks at Van Pelt Library may notice they have a
little extra breathing room. The library has cut 2,255 journal
subscriptions from its 2004-05 holdings, as journal prices have
increased faster than the library's budget. But the size of the
materials budget -- $13.1 million allotted for books, journals,
magazines, periodicals, films and electronic resources -- is not to
blame, library officials said. Rather, officials blame big publishing
companies, which they say have raised prices as the companies have
bought up academic journals over the last two decades. In 1993,
journals accounted for 64 percent of the materials budget. This number
has increased to almost 70 percent in the 2005 materials budget.
Publishing giant Reed Elsevier claims 18 percent of the market in
science, technology and medical journals. An annual subscription to
the chemistry journal Tetrahedron, published by Elsevier, costs the
library $31,600. The Brown University library system has also
criticized price increases. However, it has not had to cancel
subscriptions since the early 1990s, as its materials budget has kept
pace with journals' price increases. The 2005 Brown materials budget
stands at $5 million, of which 66 percent is devoted to journals. As
research libraries across the nation decry price increases, Penn's
library system is calling for reform through its Winning Independence
Web site. Linked to the library system's Web site this September, the
site encourages professors to be active on journals' editorial boards
and to push for fair pricing policies. At the heart of the uproar over
pricing is frustration -- on the part of the library and some
professors -- with publishers' restrictive copy agreements. Many
journal publishers require faculty members to sign over their
copyright as a condition for publication. This prevents professors
from submitting published journal articles to online archives such as
Penn's [OA repository] Scholarly Commons, which is one way the library
can increase its holdings in the face of a limited budget.



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