You Can Make a Difference
The system is changing, but keeping the momentum going will require both individual and collective action. The following list has been compiled from a variety of sources, including a number of public statements that have accompanied recent campus actions around journal cancellations.
Actions Librarians Can Take
As Librarians
- Educate faculty, staff, students, and university administrators on the business practices of different journal publishers and their impact on the health of scholarly communication.
- Consider rejecting bundled or aggregated license agreements and issue a public statement explaining why.
- Consider canceling unreasonably expensive journals and issue a public statement explaining why.
- Negotiate with vendors of electronic content (journals and databases) for full access by walk-in patrons.
- Negotiate with vendors of electronic content for the right to use the content for interlibrary loan and electronic reserves.
- Include OA journals in the library catalog.
- Work with your campus to launch an open-access, OAI-compliant institutional eprint repository, for both texts and data.
- Help faculty deposit their research articles in the institutional repository. To create momentum, the library could help faculty put their past publications into digital form, deposit them in the repository, and enter the relevant metadata.
- Consider publishing an open-access journal.
- Help OA journals launched at the university become known to other libraries, indexing services, potential funders, authors, and readers.
- Consider offering to assure the long-term preservation of some specific body of OA content.
- Consider redirecting some funds from the materials budget to pay author fees for faculty who publish in Open Access journals.
- Consider buying institutional memberships in organizations such as the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition [SPARC], the Public Library of Science PloS), BioMed Central, or other groups that seek to increase broad and cost-effective access to peer reviewed scholarship.
As Authors
- Modify any contract you sign with a publisher to ensure that you retain the rights to use your work as you see fit, including posting it to a public archive or institutional repository.
- Become aware of the pricing policies of journals (including commercial electronic journals) in your field.
- Submit papers to quality journals that have reasonable pricing practices. Where possible publish in Open Access journals, which employ funding models that do not charge readers or their institutions for access. Notify unreasonably expensive journals of your decision to submit elsewhere. To find peer-reviewed OA journals in your field, see the Directory of Open Access Journals.
- When applying for research grants, ask the foundation for funds to pay the processing fees charged by OA journals. Many foundations are already on the record as willing to do this.
- Deposit preprints and/or post-prints in disciplinary or institutional repositories. There is currently no official or complete list of repositories or archives, but for more information see http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/lists.htm#archives
As Reviewers
- Consider declining offers to review for unreasonably expensive journals. Notify the journal of the reason for your refusal.
- When asked to referee a paper for an Open Access journal, accept the invitation.
As Editors
- If you are an editor or on the editorial board of a subscription journal examine the pricing practices of that journal. If appropriate, start an in-house discussion on pricing.
- Consider relinquishing editorial posts with unreasonably expensive journals. Notify the journal of the reason for your refusal.
- When asked to serve on the editorial board for an Open Access journal, accept the invitation.
- Include your librarian when meeting with a publisher's representative.
As Professionals
- Encourage your professional associations to maintain (or adopt!) reasonable prices and user-friendly access terms.
- Encourage your professional associations to explore alternatives to contracting or selling their publications to a commercial publisher.
- Encourage your professional associations to consider creating enhanced competitors to expensive commercial titles.
- Encourage your professional associations to consider launching an open access journal or creating a disciplinary repository in your field.
Learn More
These sources were used as the basis for this list of actions:
- Peter Suber has compiled and summarized a list of college and university actions against high journal prices. The list includes many links to policy statements.
- Create Change, developed by the Association of Research Libraries and SPARC and supported by the Association of College and Research Libraries, asks "Shouldn't the way we share research be as advanced as the Internet?" It includes actions you can take.
- Suber's site also contains a list of actions to further the cause of Open Access.
For information on institutional or individual memberships and support:
Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition [SPARC]
Public Library of Science
BioMed Central
Budapest Open Access Initiative
DSpace
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