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.
Cecelia Parks coordinates Teaching & Learning instruction and liaises with general education programs, including COLA 1500, Writing & Rhetoric, and Engagements courses. In addition to teaching and working with a number of classes in each program, she also leads T&L assessment efforts.
"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."
In recent weeks it has emerged that Elsevier is negotiating a new deal with VSNU, a consortia of Dutch Universities. According to press reports on leaked details of the deal…Elsevier will essentially accept a “zero revenue growth” position for its journal in exchange for the universities purchasing a large set of their data analytics products. There are many reasons why signing a deal like this would represent a very insidious precedent for the academic community.
Carnegie Mellon University and Elsevier Thursday announced a new agreement to radically change how the institution pays to read and publish research. Instead of paying separately to access Elsevier’s catalog of paywalled content and publish open-access articles in Elsevier journals, Carnegie Mellon will pay one flat fee for both.
Postdoctoral Fellow Shaun Yon-Seng Khoo at Université de Montréal suggests the possibility of transforming subscription payments into article processing charges (APC) to produce articles free for all to read.
Molecular biologists Peter Walter and Dyche Mullins describe the changing relationship between scholars and commercial publishers like Elsevier and propose steps that individual academics can take to help their communities escape from what they characterize as a parasitic relationship.