Although Bill his as a the return address to his message, it seems to me to be of considerable relevance to the crystallographic community as a whole. My recent experience representing the ACA on the AIP Governing Board and Executive Committee provided considerable introduction into many of the issues facing publishers. Some of these are generic and have to do with the corporatization of increasing portions of human activity. Others are reminiscent of the behavior of BP in the Louisiana Gulf. Still others are spin-offs of the aggressive (and I believe ill-advised) actions of the NIH to enforce Open Access unilaterally, by diluting the responsibility for compliance to the maximum extent (ie., to individual authors) by using the power to fund as a threat in enforcing submission of approved manuscripts to PubMed Central. In short, nobody looks very good from my perspective. The promise of widespread and instant access to publicly-funded information is experiencing serious growing pains, and many kinks have yet to be worked out of the system. I know that publishers are facing serious repercussions from the fact that neither quality peer review nor is cost have factored constructively into the NIH decisions.
I am reminded by NPG's actions in California of the recent State School Board actions in Texas regarding the teaching of both evolution and history. It shares with Texas School Board action that it focuses on a large enough market share to aim at a tipping point. If the NPG initiative succeeds in California, it will pave the way to similar increases to all state institutions. This is clearly a tactical device to strengthen the position of NPG among publishers, as budgets will not allow continuation of Nature subscriptions without eliminating subscriptions to other journals, journals which I in fact read more assiduously than I do Nature publications. The consequence will be to the serious detriment of scientific integrity everywhere. I urge all who read Bill's message to consider carefully the long-term consequences of letting Nature win this one. I have no assurance that my action was the right one, but I similarly have no doubt that for me joining the boycott was the only acceptable action for me. Charlie Begin forwarded message: > From: "Charles W. Carter, Jr" <[email protected]> > Date: June 9, 2010 9:02:35 AM EDT > To: "William G. Scott" <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [ccp4bb] Off-topic: Univ California boycott of Nature publishing > group > > Bill, > > I was shocked by this news. I am in full agreement with the content of the > letter. I have had disagreements with the NPG editorial policies over the > years, during which time they have published junk over my objections as a > reviewer, so I am already disposed to be hostile to the major publishing > interests, including Nature and Science. > > I have just sent this message to an editor at Nature to whom I had promised a > review: > > Rachel, > > I have just learned of an effort by Nature Publishing Group to increase > subscriptions to Nature Journals four-fold to the University of California > library systems. This is unconscionable. > > The UC library system has suggested that all UC faculty cease to peer review > documents for Nature publishing group journals. I have decided to join this > boycott, because I strongly believe that the Nature action cannot be left > unchallenged. > > Please take me off your list of reviewers. This refusal to review is also > retrospective. I will therefore not be sending you my review of the > manuscript by (deleted). > > I hope that you will relay this action to your superiors. > > Charlie Carter > > On Jun 9, 2010, at 12:50 AM, William G. Scott wrote: > >> Hi folks: >> >> Sorry about the off-topic nature (so to speak) of this post, especially >> given that it is not yet Friday, but I am interested what our community >> thinks of this: >> >> http://library.ucsc.edu/sites/default/files/Nature_Faculty_Letter.pdf >> >> Something similar happened with UC and Cell Press a few years ago. >> >> I worry about the monopolistic tendencies of these journals, but I also >> worry about the consequences of trying to restrict faculty, students, >> postdocs, etc from publishing where they see fit. (Admittedly our department >> already holds it against you if you publish in Nature, so this may be a bit >> of a moot point.) At the very least, it should be amusing to watch the two >> beasts do battle. >> >> Well? >> >> -- Bill >> >> >
