Commercial Scientific Journals

I'm not a fan of commercial scientific journals. I have a sentimental attachment to Nature and a few others with a nice history but I think that in the age of the arXiv they are an expensive anachronism. Poverty has driven the University of California to strike back.

The University of California system has said "enough" to the Nature Publishing Group, one of the leading commercial scientific publishers, over a big proposed jump in the cost of the group's journals.

On Tuesday, a letter went out to all of the university's faculty members from the California Digital Library, which negotiates the system's deals with publishers, and the University Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication. The letter said that Nature proposed to raise the cost of California's license for its journals by 400 percent next year. If the publisher won't negotiate, the letter said, the system may have to take "more drastic actions" with the help of the faculty. Those actions could include suspending subscriptions to all of the Nature Group journals the California system buys access to—67 in all, including Nature.

I see no good reason why science should keep pouring vast amounts of cash into journals that mostly provide little of value. Good, cheap, alternatives exist.

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