From: Jean-Claude Guédon <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2014 10:15:54 -0500

Sandy is quite right. This said, university librarians are not against
university presses; they just try reacting to unfortunate financial
situations. This means that libraries and university presses should
work much more closely together, and there are some signs that this is
beginning to happen.

Remember, as a set of institutions, the universities of the world have
all they need to run and manage a communication system that is fairer,
more efficient and cheaper than the present system. All is needed is
more collaboration and less competition.

With regard to competition, never forget that whoever organizes and
runs a competitive system gains power out of it. Competition shapes
the nature of the effort to be accomplished; it helps identify
champions; it does precious little to improve the general quality of
all the participants. Some degree of competition in some limite,
elite, groups, may make sense, but as a general tool to manage complex
systems, it is inadequate, not to say counterproductive. The
competitive essence of the US health system is a perfect example of
all this: lots of Nobel prizes and a general life expectancy for the
country at abysmal levels.

Jean-Claude Guédon


Le jeudi 16 janvier 2014 à 18:36 -0500, LIBLICENSE a écrit :
From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2014 10:47:41 -0600

There is some good news for university presses in this decision, viz.,
"They cannot go on cutting back the acquisition of monographs to
compensate for such price increases."

Sandy Thatcher



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:

*******
[SNIP]