From: "Jim O'Donnell" <[log in to unmask]> Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2019 20:18:16 -0700 From Gary Price's Infodocket: Sustaining Values and Scholarship: A Statement by the Provosts of the Big Ten Academic Alliance "Universities are fundamentally about creating and sharing knowledge. Research and scholarship reflect the cumulative benefits of recorded knowledge. And students learn by exploring the discoveries and creative endeavors that have been shared over time. Simply stated, past knowledge fuels new knowledge, advancing global progress and individual growth. However, our systems of sharing knowledge no longer work in support of our academic enterprise. The current system of academic publishing is complex and has evolved unlike traditional markets. In its current state, academic publishing behaves as a price-inelastic market, with little relationship between demand and price. Cost increases for publications have been unrelenting with highs of 10- 12% annual inflation in the 1990s and now a more “modest” rate of 5-6% that still outpaces the CPI. Publisher mergers and acquisition of non-profit society publications by commercial entities, along with “big deal” aggregations for publisher databases, have contributed to an unsustainable model. Today, five commercial publishers control a majority market share of academic journals, the venues in which a large proportion of our scientific and other discoveries are documented and shared. The majority of published research is locked behind paywalls and accessible." [Clip] "With Big Ten libraries’ expenditures on journals exceeding $190 million, we recognize that our institutions are privileged in the level of access we provide our campuses, yet the status quo is not sustainable." Release https://www.btaa.org/about/news-and-publications/news/2019/06/10/sustaining-values-and-scholarship-a-statement-by-the-provosts-of-the-big-ten-academic-alliance Full Text of Statement https://www.btaa.org/docs/default-source/default-document-library/sustaining-values-and-scholarship.pdf