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Background and perspective: Elsevier publishes 250,000 articles a year in 2,000 journals. Its archives contain seven million publications. Total yearly downloa

Background and perspective: Elsevier publishes 250,000 articles a year in 2,000 journals. Its archives contain seven million publications. Total yearly downloads amount to 240 million. The company is currently being boycotted by academics who object to its business model, which includes "paywalls" and (in their opinion) excessively high subscription charges. Some very large journals (those with more than 5000 articles) charge subscription prices as high as $14,000. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier

masklinn 14y ago
SV-POW has a number of posts on the subject of open access in general[0] and elsevier in particular[1]. [0] http://svpow.com/category/open-access/ http://svpow.com/category/open-access/ [1] http://svpow.com/category/stinkin-mammals/stinkin-publishers/ http://svpow.com/category/stinkin-mammals/stinkin-publishers...
- diminish 14y ago
  it is not about only universities who may pay for subscription somehow; independent scientists must be able to have full access to scientific publications for free, long term. otherwise, paywalls and closed software will make a global human science impossible going forward to 21st century.
hack_edu 14y ago
> The company is currently being boycotted by academics who object to its business model The only way to win the war is through convincing the librarians and administrators who cut the checks for an institution's subscription. They're who drive prices.
- scott_s 14y ago
  Not necessarily. The academics are the ones who provide both the product and the labor.
- SoftwareMaven 14y ago
  But they are only going to cut checks for journals that the departments are asking for. The more demand for a particular journal, the harder it is for the library to not cut that check.
  - hack_edu 14y ago
    True, but its very rare that an institution subscribes on a journal-by-journal basis. The pricing structure makes this approach ridiculously expensive and impractical. The price of a dozen or two a la carte journals will usually cost as much as a package of all the journals in that subject area (including the ones you want specifically). Some journals, like the journal Nature, are only available when you buy a massively expensive package. Individual journal subscriptions also often come in packages grouped by years; you have to buy a different set if you want a set of volumes from 1890-1940, 1940-1990 or a package that sunsets all volumes over 10 years prior. This isn't as much a problem when you back subscription packages. The downside of purchasing this way is that when your subscription lapses, you lose all the access you had (since you don't 'own' it). Were you to go the a la carte method, you 'own' them but have to pay a $100+ 'hosting fee', per journal on a yearly basis. The ridiculous prices to subscribe to a la carte journals is one of the primary problems, and the biggest gun that he publishers have to our head.
    - meej 14y ago
      I think it's also worthwhile to recognize that librarians have been trying to sound the alarm on this problem for at least a decade. In 2001, Kenneth Frazier, Director of Libraries at UW-Madison, wrote an article in D-Lib Magazine where he named such journal packages the "Big Deal" and urged library administrators not to buy them. http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march01/frazier/03frazier.html http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march01/frazier/03frazier.html

masklinn 14y ago

SV-POW has a number of posts on the subject of open access in general[0] and elsevier in particular[1]. [0] http://svpow.com/category/open-access/ http://svpow.com/category/open-access/ [1] http://svpow.com/category/stinkin-mammals/stinkin-publishers/ http://svpow.com/category/stinkin-mammals/stinkin-publishers...

diminish 14y ago
it is not about only universities who may pay for subscription somehow; independent scientists must be able to have full access to scientific publications for free, long term. otherwise, paywalls and closed software will make a global human science impossible going forward to 21st century.

hack_edu 14y ago

> The company is currently being boycotted by academics who object to its business model The only way to win the war is through convincing the librarians and administrators who cut the checks for an institution's subscription. They're who drive prices.

scott_s 14y ago
Not necessarily. The academics are the ones who provide both the product and the labor.
SoftwareMaven 14y ago
But they are only going to cut checks for journals that the departments are asking for. The more demand for a particular journal, the harder it is for the library to not cut that check.
- hack_edu 14y ago
  True, but its very rare that an institution subscribes on a journal-by-journal basis. The pricing structure makes this approach ridiculously expensive and impractical. The price of a dozen or two a la carte journals will usually cost as much as a package of all the journals in that subject area (including the ones you want specifically). Some journals, like the journal Nature, are only available when you buy a massively expensive package. Individual journal subscriptions also often come in packages grouped by years; you have to buy a different set if you want a set of volumes from 1890-1940, 1940-1990 or a package that sunsets all volumes over 10 years prior. This isn't as much a problem when you back subscription packages. The downside of purchasing this way is that when your subscription lapses, you lose all the access you had (since you don't 'own' it). Were you to go the a la carte method, you 'own' them but have to pay a $100+ 'hosting fee', per journal on a yearly basis. The ridiculous prices to subscribe to a la carte journals is one of the primary problems, and the biggest gun that he publishers have to our head.
  - meej 14y ago
    I think it's also worthwhile to recognize that librarians have been trying to sound the alarm on this problem for at least a decade. In 2001, Kenneth Frazier, Director of Libraries at UW-Madison, wrote an article in D-Lib Magazine where he named such journal packages the "Big Deal" and urged library administrators not to buy them. http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march01/frazier/03frazier.html http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march01/frazier/03frazier.html