Academic journals too expensive for Harvard
Harvard Library sent out a
Unaffordable journals – the answer is openaccess
By now, the library had journal related expenses of almost $3.75million per year. Academic journals would exploit their copyrightmonopoly in order to extract high profits, the communiqué hinted:”Even though scholarly output continues to grow and publishing canbe expensive, profit margins of 35% and more suggest that theprices we must pay do not solely result from an increasing supplyof new articles.”
Harvard Library director, Robert Darnton,
“The system is absurd, and it is inflicting terrible damage onlibraries. One year’s subscription to The Journal of ComparativeNeurology costs the same as 300 monographs. We simply cannot go onpaying the increase in subscription prices. In the long run, theanswer will be open-access journal publishing, but we needconcerted effort to reach that goal,” Darnton commented.
This development may blow further wind in the sails of openaccess advocates. 2012 started with an uproar by a Britishscientist
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