Reed Elsevier Fading Abroad

Reed Elsevier faces a serious challenge to one of its main revenue drivers as the British House of Commons Science And Technology Committee prepares to investigate the growing academic backlash against scientific publishing - a market worth more than 4.5 billion pounds a year. Over the past year American academics have become increasingly dissatisfied with companies that profit from the publication of academic papers, even calling for a boycott of some Reed companies. That dissatisfaction has migrated across the Atlantic.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,3604,1105250,00.html
(The Guardian, December 12, 2003)

Increasingly, universities are reluctant to pay the large fees demanded by publishers and are turning to so-called open access journals, where the costs of publication are paid by the authors. One of the largest moves towards open access so far is the establishment of the United States Public Library of Science, a non-profit organisation backed by a Nobel prize winner and an American charity. In the past two years more than 30,000 scientists in 180 countries have pledged their support to the PLoS. In Britain, Biomed Central has published more than 90 journals.

Reed and other publishers have made it plain they do not think that open access will thrive because it is neither economically sustainable nor a more efficient way of publishing scientific journals.

Article also referenced in LibLicense listserv:
http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/ListArchives/0312/msg00042.html
(LibLicense, December 17, 2003)

Posted by Tom on December 19, 2003