Pricing
Pressure over prices
The proposed boycott of Nature Publishing Group by the University of California illustrates the plight of cash-strapped libraries worldwide. Rebecca Pool looks for an answer
It’s no secret that academic libraries worldwide are facing the most diffi cult economic challenges ever. Libraries’ acquisition budgets throughout Europe are at best static while in North America, up to 25 per cent cuts were reported by members of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) from 2009 to 2010. As ARL executive director Charles B
Lowry warns: ‘If there is any message that one should take away from our data, it is that there is close to zero tolerance and little capacity for price rises next year and beyond.’
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Laine Farley, executive director of the University of California’s digital research library, California Digital Library, would agree. Recently at the centre of the well- publicised row in which UC threatened Nature Publishing Group (NPG) with a total boycott following proposed price rises, Farley is adamant the industry needs to change (see ‘A very public affair’, page 20). So far, many libraries have been dealing
with budget reductions via a range of cost-cutting strategies, including reduced monograph purchases, cancelled journal
titles and a shift from print to electronic- only journals. Librarians are also continually negotiating prices with publishers; as Farley points out, many publishers that UC works with have agreed to either no or very low price rises. But these tactics cannot be used indefi nitely. ‘[Price negotiations] have been quite successful, but once we get to the end of this, we’re back in the same boat,’ says Farley. ‘It’s not just about adjusting to what we can pay. The whole model is crazy, it doesn’t make sense. The way prices are set, the market, and the relationship between the consumers and producers are not right.’ As she points out, libraries purchase journals on behalf of faculty who play no part in valuing the product. ‘They [the academics] sometimes don’t even realise we’re paying for
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