From: Jean-Claude Guédon <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2014 16:31:32 -0500

 It has long argued that the cost of access to scholarly and periodicals
was rising at an unsustainable rate. Here is confirmation of the fact.

Recent budgetary cutbacks in the Province of Quebec have led the director
of libraries at the Université de Montréal (disclosure: my university) to
refuse to renew the "Big Deal" with Wiley. The publisher has responded by
rather drastic price offers and absurd arguments (as you will be able to
read below). In effect - and this is a new one for me - your subscription
rates with a publisher may depend on how long a faithful customer you have
been. In other words, if you are not a good boy or a good girl, we shall
punish you. In the airplane industry, I had heard of frequent travellers
enjoying free or cheap upgrades, but I had never heard that less frequent
travellers had to pay more for their seats! Are publishers even worse than
airlines?

I have translated the French-language announcement that is available on the
site of our libraries and which you can check for yourself if Molière's
tongue is not too esoteric for you. The URL is
http://www.bib.umontreal.ca/communiques/20140115-DB-annulation-periodiques-wiley.htm

One conclusion emerges immediately: confidentiality clauses are something
to be rejected generally, as a collective move to put the publishers on
notice that the advantage of the panoptic position is not theirs alone. The
prisoner's dilemma is not to be accepted.

The second thing to mention is that the director of our libraries is going
to need all the support he can get from both within the university (and he
has it here) and across all universities, especially ARL universities. I
should hope that messages of support and ideas as to tactics, as well as
sharing of similar experiments may converge toward him at
[log in to unmask] . Canadian librarians, in particular, should
quickly show their full support for the courageous move of our Library
Director.

Here is the announcement aimed at the university community that came out
last afternoon and which I translated this morning:

*******

January 14th, 2014. Out of 1510 periodicals in the *Wiley Online
Library,*the Université de Montréal is cancelling subscriptions to
1142 titles at
the end of January. As a result, and from this point on, the articles found
in the cancelled titles will no longer be available on-line. However,
access to earlier issues will be entirely maintained.

This action results from a process that started a long while ago. The
financial cut-backs imposed by the Québec government only accelerated the
decision process. The result of the analysis is simple: libraries have been
driven to the wall because of the yearly rise of subscriptions to
periodicals that hover between 3% and 6%. They cannot go on cutting back
the acquisition of monographs to compensate for such price increases. As a
result, this conclusion, as well as the adopted solution, would have been
the same a few years down the line, independently of the financial context.

Please note that libraries at McGill University also subscribe to the
periodicals owned by *John Wiley &Sons*. In 2014, the Université de
Montréal pays as much as McGill but can access only 368 periodicals while
McGill benefits from full access to the 1510 titles in the *Wiley *collection.
The publisher refuses to grant us the same conditions as McGill because –
such is the pretext - McGill has subscribed to the *Wiley Online
Library *longer.
If, this year,the Université de Montréal wanted access to the full
collection, it would have to add $243,000(Canadian) to what McGill pays
despite the fact that usage of Wiley periodicals at the Université de
Montréal is 45% lower than at McGill.

The unique characteristics of each periodical is what has allowed
publishers, for several years, to hold its university customers
captive.Publishers can set prices at will, and do so all the more easily
that the market is concentrated in the hands of 5 multinational companies.
Stéphanie Gagnon, Head of collections at the Université de Montréal,
explains that “*John Wiley & Sons *is one of the multinationals with which
we must deal”.

Since 1986, in the larger universities of North America, the acquisition
budget for periodicals has grown four times as fast as inflation. The pace
of these increases is unsustainable and a crisis cannot be avoided. This
reasoning has brought the Administration of the Libraries at the Université
de Montréal to begin a campaign aiming at increasing the university
community's consciousness in this regard.

Louise Béliveau, Vice-President (students and sustainable development) of
the Université de Montréal believes that “the research community must rally
together if better financial conditions are to be obtained: few publishers
will take the chance that a revolt might deprive them of their raw
materials and a free work force. Yet, it is clear that libraries alone will
not succeed because they simply do not carry the weight of the publishers'
oligopoly.”

The Administration of the libraries is fully conscious that such
cancellations will impact teaching and research: the maintained
subscriptions correspond to 71.4% of use in 2012. To alleviate this
situation a little, the $3.00 fee for inter-library loans of articles is
cancelled.

In the coming months, Professor Vincent Larivière, an expert in
bibliometrics and infometrics who holds a Research Chair in our School of
Library and Information Science, will work on refining the methodology used
to select periodicals. This will be followed by a broad consultation of
researchers which, in 2015, will likely lead to various decision updates.

In Summary


   - In 2012, John Wiley & Sons has announced profits amounting to $437
   millions of dollars out of a total revenue stream of 1 billion dollars.

   - In our university, financial cutbacks imposed by the Québec Government
   have translated into decreases in acquisition in 2012-3 and 2013-4.

   - The libraries at the Université de Montréal will renew their
   subscriptions to 368 periodicals (out of the 1510 titles that make up the
   full collection of *Wiley Online Library*). For the same cost, McGill
   University has access to the full collection.

   - Wiley Periodicals that have been published before 2014 will remain
   accessible.

   - The subscriptions that have been maintained correspond to 71.4% of use
   in 2012.

   - Periodical articles can be ordered through Inter-library loans (ILS).
   Delivery is done by e-mail and within five business days. The $3 fee is
   cancelled to soften the impact of cancellations.

   - The method used to select titles will be refined and will be followed
   by a consultation of researchers. The list of titles that are maintained
   will be modified accordingly.


A line has to be drawn in the sand!

Jean-Claude Guédon

Professeur titulaire
Littérature comparée
Université de Montréal