Scientific Method —

California libraries gearing up for fight against Nature (Updated)

A boycott of journals produced by the Nature Publishing Group may be brewing …

The library system of the University of California may call upon the schools' faculty to boycott journals originating from the Nature Publishing Group if they can't come to an agreement on licensing costs for journal access. The libraries are being hammered by budget cuts resulting from California's deteriorating state budget situation, and have already alerted content providers that it would need to work out flexible licensing arrangements in order to maintain journal access for their faculty and students. NPG has apparently chosen not to heed that request, raising the potential for a showdown.

The UC system includes campuses at Berkeley, Davis, San Francisco, Merced, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Irvine, Riverside, and San Diego. Many of these are considered among the finest research institutions in the world (if, as a graduate of Berkeley, I do say so myself). As state-supported schools, however, these institutions are also at the mercy of the vagaries of the state budget, which has been subject to various crises over the past few decades. In the past, that has resulted in increased tuition fees, faculty hiring freezes, and, most relevant, major cutbacks in the libraries' budget.

According to an open letter to its faculty, a number of price reductions have been negotiated with other content providers, allowing the libraries to eliminate $1 million from its budget. That may not be nearly enough; the UC system apparently faces a cut of nearly half a billion dollars, a drop of over 15 percent in what it receives from the state annually.

All of the million of dollars it has saved would apparently need to go to NPG to maintain access to its journals; the libraries claim that it's requesting a 400 percent increase from the current rates.

In response to the brewing crisis, a Vice Dean at UCSF, Keith Yamamoto, is apparently looking into organizing a boycott of NPG publications by UC faculty. According to numbers compiled by the libraries, this threat carries considerable weight. Over the past six years, UC faculty members have published over 5,000 articles in NPG journals, which have produced $19 million in revenue for the company. The boycott would go well beyond publications, however, as UC faculty members have also served as editors and peer reviewers for the journals—the latter service performed for free.

Obviously, there's a tradeoff for faculty, in that many of the NPG journals are recognized for their high quality, and provide a level of prestige that may be essential for advancing a researcher's career. The libraries recommend alternatives, such as the Public Library of Science journals, but those have yet to reach an equivalent level of recognition. The letter also recommends other open access policies, such as following the NIH open access guidelines, but NPG has already taken actions to support these policies.

In essence, the situation may become a high-stakes bet. The UC faculty would be gambling that the boycott wouldn't be fragmented by researchers tempted to publish in NPG journals; NPG would be betting that the boycott wouldn't drive up the prominence of competing journals, such as those from PLoS. At this point, it's difficult to lay odds on either of those outcomes.

Nature's take

In response to our query, Nature Publishing group provided us with a public statement in which it voices distress that what it had assumed were ongoing, confidential negotiations have been disclosed to the public. As for the assertions made along with the disclosure, NPG thinks they're misleading. "The implication that NPG is increasing its list prices by massive amounts is entirely untrue," the statement reads. According to Nature, its library subscriptions are currently capped at seven percent annually.

Where did the massive increase mentioned by the UC libraries come from? The statement argues that the price increase seems dramatic simply because UC was operating under a discount that NPG terms "unsustainable." NPG claims that it's providing the UC libraries with a discount from list of close to 90 percent, and that "other subscribers, both in the US and around the world, are subsidizing them." Even with the new pricing in place, NPG estimates that the average download of a paper would only cost UC a bit more than 50¢.

NPG seems convinced that cooler heads and a detailed analysis of the numbers will see the UC libraries return to the negotiating table. "We are confident that the appointment of Professor Keith Yamamoto and other scientific faculty to lead the proposed boycott," it states, "will mean they will be in a position to assess value with a rigorous and transparent methodology."

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