Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 22:08:47 -0700 (PDT)
From: Subbiah Arunachalam
Friends:
Here is an open letter to international publishers sent by a group of Chinese
institutions. Indian science policy makers, directors of institutions, vice
chancellors and senior scientists and scholars should support this initiative
with a letter of their own to international publishers.
Subbiah Arunachalam
http://www.las.ac.cn/subpage/Information_Content.jsp?InformationID=5372
Joint Open Letter to International Publishers
Scholarly journals and monographs are knowledge created by worldwide scientists
and scholars. With the efforts of Chinese libraries and international
publishers, China has introduced a large number of international full text STM
journal databases in recent years, which has indeed improved the wide
dissemination and sharing of knowledge, and has played an important role in the
development of Chinese research and education.
However, in recent years, the prices of international STM journals and their
full text databases have continuously been increased well above the general CPI
increase rate. Some went up annually at the rateof more than 10%, and a few have
raised their prices even at an annual rate above 20%. This has dramatically
pushed Chinese library acquisition expenses for international journals to double
or even triple within no more than 10 years, causing some librariesto reduce the
subscriptions. Facing the international financial crisis, many countries have
kept their library budgets under strict caps or even cut library budgets, and
Chinese libraries have also experienced severe pressures for rigorously
controlling their subscription budgets.
To our dismay and anger, a few international STM publishers, using their
monopolistic position, recently demand to raise the subscription prices for
their full-text database at a yearly rate of more than 14% for the next 3 years,
despite of the fact that their prices have already had a yearly increase of more
than 10% in the last contract period. Those publishers claimed that they aim to
raise the Chinese users’ cost per article to that of most developed countries in
Europe and America in 2020, completely ignoring the fact that China is still a
developing country with GDP per capita and investment in research and education
per capita still far below the average level of developed countries. Those
publishers require that the growth of subscription fees for their products to be
kept pace with the nominal growth rate of R&D investment in China, intentionally
blind to the fact that China’s education and science are still at an early
stage, and the spending coverage of Chinese R&D investment is usually far
greater than those of similar institutions in developed countries. Those
publishers care solely for their ownprofit growth targets, paying no real
attention to the rights of China users to access to STM information and the
actual Chinese economic situation. The sharp price rises they demand are simply
far beyond any reasonable product price growth in the world and absolutely
exceed the capacity of Chinese libraries. It is totally unreasonable, and
categorically unacceptable.
Libraries and publishers have mutual responsibility and common interest in
promoting the wide dissemination of knowledge and in meeting people’s needs for
information. The dutifully fulfillment of this responsibility and the reliable
realization of the interest can only be based on an affordable, stable, and
sustainable mechanism to protect users’ rights, to promote positive cooperation,
and to establish long-term affordability, with a keen understanding of the
social realities. Especially with the fast developing digital information
networks, almost all the physical, technical, and even economic barriers of
knowledge dissemination are fast being overcome, the open dissemination of
knowledge and forceful protection of public interest become mainstream social
needs. Any attempts to deprive user rights, reap extravagant profits, and to
sabotage the STM supply chain, will not only harm users and libraries, destroy
the stability of the STM information market, but will also inevitably hurt the
long term self interests of those publishers. And because of the rigid
constrains of library subscription funding, it will unquestionably attack the
market shares of other STM publishers and reduce the vitality of the entire
market.
Therefore, we strongly require those publishers to act with a high sense of
responsibilities to users, themselves, and the market, to respect the legitimate
rights of Chinese users, and to develop a reasonable, realistic price policy and
flexible subscription options in line with the Chinese conditions and economical
realities, avoiding cutting off the access of Chinese users to their products
and forcing them to re-allocate funding to other and many equally important
resources. We also call upon all other international publishers to work together
with libraries and user communities for the benefit of wide dissemination and
utilization of knowledge, and to keep down the price changes of STM journals and
databases and to maintain a reasonable, cooperative, and sustainable STM journal
market.
We, the undersigned libraries, promise to work together to fight the
unreasonable high price increase, for the sake of China users’ long-term and
legitimate rights and interests, and also for the interest of a sustainable STM
information market. We are willing to work together actively and responsibly
with all the publishers to discuss and explore appropriate and effective
solutions to well balance the interests of users, publishers and libraries.
Signatures of Library Representatives
Library Name Duty
National Science and Technology Library Yuan Haibo Director
National Library of China Chen Li Associate Director
National Science Library, Chinese Academy of Sciences Zhang Xiaolin Director
Sun Tan Associate Director
PekingUniversityLibrary ZhuQiang Director
Xiao Long Associate Director
TsinghuaUniversityLibrary Deng Jingkang Director
FudanUniversityLibrary Ge Jianxiong Director
Shanghai Library Zhou Deming Associate Director
Instituteof Medical Information, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences Dai Tao
Director
Agricultural Information Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences
Meng Xianxue Associate Director
The Library of Renmin University of China Liu Chunhong Associate Director
ChinaAgricultural University Library Pan Wei Associate Director
TianjinAcademic Library and Information System Li Qiushi Director
JilinUniversityLibrary Li Shuyuan Director
ZhejiangUniversityLibraries Ma Jingdi Associate Director
NanjingUniversityLibrary Shi Mei Associate Director
SoutheastUniversityLibrary Li Aiguo Associate Director
ShanghaiJiao Tong UniversityLibrary Lin Haoming Associate Director
Xi’anJiaotong University Library Shao Jing Associate Director
WuhanUniversityLibrary Liu Xia Associate Director
HuazhongUniversityof Science & Technology Library Yuan Qing Associate Director
SunYat-sen UniversityLibraries Luo Chunrong Associate Director
Harbin Institute of Technology Library Yu Guang Associate Director
DalianUniversityof Technology Library Liu Bin Associate Director
BeijingNormal UniversityLibrary Huang Yanyun Associate Director
PKU Health Science Library Wang Jinling Associate Director
CapitalNormal UniversityLibrary Xiong Li Associate Director
ShandongUniversityLibrary Jiang Baoliang Associate Director
SichuanUniversityLibrary Lin Ping Associate Director
XiamenUniversitylibraries Chen Xiaohui Associate Director
ChongqingUniversityLibrary Peng Xiaodong Director
LanzhouUniversityLibrary Sha Zhongyong Director
CentralSouth UniversityLibrary Zhang Zengrong Director
ZhengzhouUniversityLibrary Zhu Rong Associate Director
September 1, 2010
