The impact of the global financial crisis continues to be felt by research universities and this situation may continue for some time.
For example, in the U.S. sequestration is taking a toll on research. As reported recently in the Washington Post, of the respondents to a survey conducted by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, the Association of American Universities and the Science Coalition... Seven out of 10 who responded said they had encountered delays in research projects since the sequester took effect, and the same share said their schools were obtaining fewer new research grants". http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/universities-continue-to-lobby-against-sequesters-cuts-of-research-funding/2013/11/12/64c29e68-4bba-11e3-be6b-d3d28122e6d4_story.html Canada's research granting agencies' research granting budgets were significantly cut a couple of years back. In Greece, major universities are closed due to budget cuts, as reported in University World News and the Chronicle of Higher Education: http://chronicle.com/article/article-content/142181/ Earlier this year in the UK, higher education funding was cut by 800 million pounds - not the first round of deep cuts for this country. If the funds for research and researchers are being deeply cut, it might be timely to ask what the impact will be on scholarly publishing down the road. Less research should mean less publishing (unless of course a journal lowers its standards and publishes articles it would have previously rejected). Is anyone looking into this possibility? Has anyone taken action to prepare? Examples of the latter could include ensuring that multi-year license agreements have strong language to protect against loss of quality and/or content, or moving from prepayment (typical with licensing) to post-payment (payment on delivery, the norm with most purchasing). best, -- Dr. Heather Morrison Assistant Professor École des sciences de l'information / School of Information Studies University of Ottawa http://www.sis.uottawa.ca/faculty/hmorrison.html [email protected] _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
