This is a wonderful editorial written by people at KU, which I strongly recommend. They address the increasingly serious problem of the privatization of research, with the result that the public and scholars are getting priced out of having access to the very research they help finance and produce. This issue of open access is one where KU finds itself at the forefront. (It’s nice to read articles that pair Harvard and KU as two institutional trailblazers for open access, kind of like the mock-NCAA bracket that appeared this week based on athletes’ academic performance, where KU barely squeezes by the Harvard team to win the championship.) The editorial calls for passage of a bill before Congress that would force institutions that receive more than $100 million in federal funds to make the results of their research available on the internet. The KU team points out that with private companies now controlling 60% of all journals, prices have skyrocketed during a time when libraries budgets have remained flat at best. This is not a sustainable model, and something needs to change. Although humanities journals are not really where the problem is (prices of humanities journal subscriptions, on the whole, remain reasonable), the price explosion for subscriptions to scientific journals has caused libraries to cut everywhere they can, including curtailing expenditures on humanities journals and books. We have been relatively fortunate at KU, where budgets have remained fairly robust, but if the current trend of overpriced scientific journals continues, the libraries will be forced to take more draconian measures.
AuthorI am an associate professor of French literature and culture at the University of Kansas. The opinions expressed here are my own. They do not in any way, shape, or form represent the views of my department or university. Archives
September 2015
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