You may have heard from friends and colleagues about a disagreement between the University of California and Nature Publishing Group (NPG). Long story short:
- NPG proposed an extremely large increase in U of California’s annual license to access the NPG suite of journals. (See first Chronicle article.)
- U of California sent a letter to faculty indicating that the increase was unsustainable and proposing a boycott of NPG publications.
- NPG responded with a defense of its pricing. (See second Chronicle article.)
- U of California answered that defense.
Tweets, blog posts, articles, and emails are flying about this situation. I will point you to two blog posts by librarians that point to lots of other posts.
- A round-up from Dorothea Salo’s Book of Trogool.
- A recap from John Dupuis at Confessions of a Science Librarian.
While we’re all waiting to hear what happens next, you’re probably wondering about our situation here at JHU. We recently canceled our subscription to Scientific American, due to the increase in cost when the publication moved to NPG. Other than that, we haven’t seen any unusual price increases from NPG.