This week’s Big Deal Longread helps explain the connection between flawed science and Big Deal journal bundles. In “Why Current Publication Practices May Distort Science,” the authors explain that the oligopoly of journal publishers and the artificial scarcity created by journal selectivity contribute to a system where the contest for highest “impact” will systematically undermine the accuracy of “winning” scientific articles. It’s a compact read, and well worth your time.

As 21 Nobel Prize award-winning scientists and scholars we are writing to express our strong support for immediate open access to the results of research funded with U.S. taxpayer dollars. We understand there is an Executive Order under consideration by your Administration that would remove the 12-month embargo currently in place for access to published, taxpayer-funded research and strongly urge you to sign this order.

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An article authored by a group of researchers takes learned societies to task for siding with for-profit publishers in opposition to a zero-embargo federal open access mandate. UVA professor Brian Nosek is a co-author. The piece observes, "What publishers provide today is not much more functional than paper, but it is much more expensive. They might as well be etching our research onto sheets of gold. The public suffers twice: First they are overcharged to read the results of science they themselves funded.

We the undersigned American scientists, publishers, funders, patient advocates, librarians and members of the public endorse a national policy that would ensure that Americans are no longer denied access to the results of research their tax dollars paid for. We have read recent media reports that the executive branch is considering a zero embargo taxpayer access policy, and we are writing to express our strong support for such a move.

Thousands of researchers have taken part in the largest ever survey into experiences of research culture. The results show it's time for change – everyone in the research community can help to reimagine research. Among the study's findings:

The system favours quantity over quality, and creativity is often stifled

For the last two decades, research institutions have been buying research the same way consumers have been buying television: in big bundles. And like big cable packages, these bundles have become bloated with content nobody wants, and their prices have exploded at rates only a monopolist could love.

The University of California system has struck new deals with the Association for Computing Machinery and Journal of Medical Internet Research, and is continuing negotiations with big publishers, including (informally) with Elsevier.

"The three-year agreement maintains access to publications that include more than 2,500 journal titles in the life, physical, medical, technical, and social sciences for the total cost of over $7.7M USD with an overall projected cost reduction of over $890K USD over the term of the contract."

In an announcement to the University of North Carolina researcher community, University Librarian Elaine Westbrooks explained that the Library's negotiations with the journal vendor Elsevier will continue into the new year. Elsevier's current proposal "would impose a significant increase that exceeds available funding," Westbrooks says. "Changes to the way we access some Elsevier content are inevitable."