The faculty here at UCB will recall the 1999/2000 journal cancellation project
which resulted in cancellations valued at approximately $500,000. The main
cause for this cancellation action is that research libraries in the academy
live in an inelastic economy for journal publications, particularly so for
publications in scientific, technical and medical disciplines. In other words,
continuing and dramatic increases in journal costs with corresponding increases
in the commercialization of scholarly publishing have negatively impacted
access to the scholarly record. The gift culture in higher education and
the system of scholarly communication that supports that culture is now at
risk. Scholars and their library faculty colleagues can, however, create
workable and scalable solutions to the crises at hand. This guide has been
developed in an effort to create change in the system of scholarly communication
in the best interest of the community of scholars here at UCB and beyond.
1. Raise the level of your consciousness about the crises,
and act accordingly:
Visit the Create Change Website and find out how scholars can reform
scholarly publishing:
Make every attempt to retain licensed rights to your intellectual property
when negotiating with a publisher. You have the right to modify publishing
contracts as they relate to access and use of your intellectual property.
Consider the use of the following language in publishing contracts:
"Notwithstanding the above language, authorization to photocopy
this manuscript for educational and fair use purposes in the classroom
and for interlibrary loan is hereby granted. I also grant the right
to place an electronic copy of this manuscript on a publicly accessible
web site for educational and fair use purposes."
Check the subscription price of a journal before you agree to submit
a manuscript:
You should also evaluate whether the journal meets its primary goal to
serve the best interests of the community of scholars in your discipline:
Also consider submitting your paper to a SPARC-supported journal in your
discipline:
2. Create a dialog among your colleagues about the central
issues of the crises, and include some of the proposals to create change
in the marketplace of ideas as the basis of this dialog.
http://www.createchange.org/
3. Include the Bibliographer for
your discipline in discussions on scholarly communication and journal pricing.
Bibliographers are listed by discipline in the UCB phone directory under
the general heading "Libraries." Your Bibliographer can also share information
about the principles under which we work on contract/license negotiations
with electronic publication vendors:
http://ucblibraries.colorado.edu/collectiondevelopment/
4. Consider a de-emphasis on quantity and a greater emphasis
on quality in promotion and tenure deliberations in an effort to separate
credentialing from the dissemination of knowledge.
5. Include the acceptance of electronic publications in
promotion and tenure deliberations.
6. If you are an editor, consider moving your journal to
a non-profit publisher, or consider moving it to become an open access journal:
http://www.doaj.org/
7. If your scholarly society/association publishes a journal,
encourage it to explore alternative publishing outlets outside of the commercial
sector. In the meantime, also do what you can to support the journal's transition
to electronic form.
8. Support the UCB Libraries' cancellation of expensive,
low-use journal titles and encourage your colleagues to do likewise.
9. Support the UCB Libraries' participation in the Scholarly
Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC):
http://www.arl.org/sparc/
10. If you are a NIH grantee, please comply with the NIH Public Access Policy
http://publicaccess.nih.gov/
11. Authors should consider using the Sherpa Project
site "to find a
summary of permissions that are normally given as part of each publishers
copyright transfer agreement."
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php
The NIH also maintains a list of over 300 journals that submit articles directly to PubMed Central (PMC) on behalf of the authors:
http://publicaccess.nih.gov/submit_process_journals.htm
12. Consider attaching an "Authors Addendum" to
your next article, which will allow you to retain the right to make that
article available in a non-commercial digital archive on the Web upon
acceptance for publication, as well as assuring that you can make other uses
of your work that support teaching and research.
http://www.arl.org/sparc/author/addendum.html
NIH has suggested language as follows: "Journal acknowledges that author retains the right to provide a copy of the final manuscript to the NIH upon acceptance for journal publication for public archiving in PubMed Central as soon as possible but no later than 12 months".
13. If authors want a broader set of rights beyond NIH's language, please see the "Scholars Copyright Addendum Engine" from Science Commons:
http://scholars.sciencecommons.org/
