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Cancellation of subscriptions to Springer journals

bib.umontreal.ca

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Re: Cancellation of subscriptions to Springer journals

#31

Post by godzillabrennus »

Overtonwindow wrote: post #2

I wish universities would take the lead in forcing open the journal monopoly. It would be really great if a major university like Stanford or Harvard said to its professors: You may publish anywhere, but you must also publish it for free to the academic community. Until a major university or five takes a stand on this, the rest of us must continue to fight.

Who at a university like Harvard can make that decision? The Dean? I ask so we as a community can help move the needle.

What platform would you suggest they publish on?

Re: Cancellation of subscriptions to Springer journals

#32

Post by jonathankoren »

JW_00000 wrote: post #12
Overtonwindow wrote: post #2

I wish universities would take the lead in forcing open the journal monopoly. It would be really great if a major university like Stanford or Harvard said to its professors: You may publish anywhere, but you must also publish it for free to the academic community. Until a major university or five takes a stand on this, the rest of us must continue to fight.

> You may publish anywhere, but you must also publish it for free to the academic community. Is this possible? When publishing in a journal, I think you transfer your copyright to them; thereby preventing you from publishing the article any other way. Although as far as I know many journals allow a "pre-print version" to be published by the authors on their personal website.

If you transfer copyright at all, you typically only transfer it to the ACM, not Springer. Springer is just a contractor running a website and occasionally printing up phone books of papers that no one reads, and USB drives of PDFs people use for the week of the conference.

See http://www.acm.org/publications/policies/copyright_policy

Re: Cancellation of subscriptions to Springer journals

#33

Post by mankash666 »

While price gouging by monopolistic publishers is certainly unpleasant, the very same universities complaining about the issue raise tuition and fees disproportionately.

Save a few public universities, the Canadian and American universities operate just like the publishers they complain about.

Re: Cancellation of subscriptions to Springer journals

#34

Post by mizzao »

mankash666 wrote: post #33

While price gouging by monopolistic publishers is certainly unpleasant, the very same universities complaining about the issue raise tuition and fees disproportionately. Save a few public universities, the Canadian and American universities operate just like the publishers they complain about.

As opposed to the many private institutions in the US, Canadian universities are all publicly funded and tuition costs a few thousand dollars at the most.

Re: Cancellation of subscriptions to Springer journals

#35

Post by mizzao »

The journal publishing model may have made sense before the Internet became widespread, but now it's just a business that allows a few publishers to make bank from academics who are both doing the work (writing papers) and curating the content (peer review), all for free!

Re: Cancellation of subscriptions to Springer journals

#36

Post by 1bm »

DonPellegrino wrote: post #26
Pxtl wrote: post #18

I wonder how much this has to do with the francophonic Quebec culture. Montreal has two big universities, McGill and UdM. McGill is primarily English-speaking, while UdM is primarily French-speaking. French Canada has always been far more politically activist than English Canada - they shift paradigms without a clutch.

You're confusing UdeM with UQAM. UdeM is the more prestigious one by far, but it's also smaller than UQAM. There's at least 6 universities in Montreal, it's easy for outsiders to get lost.

Actually, UQAM trails UdeM in both enrolment, staff and research budget

Re: Cancellation of subscriptions to Springer journals

#37

Post by vonmoltke »

mizzao wrote: post #34
mankash666 wrote: post #33

While price gouging by monopolistic publishers is certainly unpleasant, the very same universities complaining about the issue raise tuition and fees disproportionately. Save a few public universities, the Canadian and American universities operate just like the publishers they complain about.

As opposed to the many private institutions in the US, Canadian universities are all publicly funded and tuition costs a few thousand dollars at the most.

Where was mankash666 talking about private universities?

Re: Cancellation of subscriptions to Springer journals

#38

Post by aexaey »

jo909 wrote: post #11

"UdeM Libraries will renew access to 150 of the 2,266 journals included in this collection. The price we will pay for these individual subscriptions in 2016 is the same we were willing to pay for the entire collection." So Springer still gets all the moneys they could have gotten anyway. I totally understand why the library has to make such a compromise, but that's not a very strong bargaining position.

And it sounds like UdeM is not exactly pleased with Springer's pricing practices - added emphasis in []:

    “We are trying to best meet the needs of our community
    despite budget cuts in the last few years, the
    [greediness of commercial publishers], and the weak
    Canadian dollar,” said Stéphanie Gagnon, Collections
    Director.

Re: Cancellation of subscriptions to Springer journals

#39

Post by untilHellbanned »

arcanus wrote: post #14
JW_00000 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You may publish anywhere, but you must also publish it for free to the academic community. Is this possible? When publishing in a journal, I think you transfer your copyright to them; thereby preventing you from publishing the article any other way. Although as far as I know many journals allow a "pre-print version" to be published by the authors on their personal website.

> When publishing in a journal, I think you transfer your copyright to them That is correct. I have done this for every publication I've ever put out (O(10)). There may be exceptions but this is certainly the dominant paradigm in the physical sciences. My two cents: this is bigger than any University. It will require a government funding agency (likely, NIH or NSF) to take a stand vis a vi the public availability of…

Agree completely. The government needs to act. As a professor in molecular biology I would be happy with the banning of publishing in for-profit journals.

Re: Cancellation of subscriptions to Springer journals

#40

Post by return0 »

mnw21cam wrote: post #17
arcanus wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When publishing in a journal, I think you transfer your copyright to them That is correct. I have done this for every publication I've ever put out (O(10)). There may be exceptions but this is certainly the dominant paradigm in the physical sciences. My two cents: this is bigger than any University. It will require a government funding agency (likely, NIH or NSF) to take a stand vis a vi the public availability of…

Since a few years ago, any EU or UK public funded research (which is most university research) must be published as open-access. It is a requirement of the funding. So this is already happening. However, it will need to be done by a greater proportion of the world to be effective. The only problem is that the method of open access publishing is usually to pay a few grand to the publisher for the privilege.

That can be a lot of money. E.g. elsevier charges $5000 / article : http://www.cell.com/rights-sharing-embargoes

And that is money that should be going to research.

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