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."

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"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