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Jeff Montgomery edited Intro.tex
about 9 years ago
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\section{The System as It Stands}
A study published in July 2014 used
the Freedom of Information Act
requests to
collect academic publishers' request access to contracts
with between academic publishers and 55 university and 12 consortia of libraries \cite{Bergstrom_2014}. 360 contracts were received, documenting prices and bundling of deals from 9 major publishers (including Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, ACS, and Oxford University Press).
They The contracts show the
results result of opaque sales practices, manipulation, and varying degrees of negotiation
skills: skill: publishers can charge vastly different prices for the
exact same products and services.
Keep in mind they are selling to nonprofit institutions whose members
\begin{itemize}
\item conduct groundbreaking and lifesaving research (often taxpayer-funded)
\item volunteer their time and talent to the publishers' \href{https://www.authorea.com/20770-peer-review-problems}{peer review process} \item pay for articles submitted and published to journals
\item and are now buying it all back.
\end{itemize}
In the mid 1990s, with the shift from print-only to digital distribution, economic formulations changed. No longer would a research university \textit{need} to subscribe to multiple copies of in-demand journals. No longer would storage space play a significant role in decisions (e.g. storage and maintenance costs for a 2500 page journal volume range from \$300-1000). No longer would impact be a limiting factor for purchased titles, or \href{https://www.authorea.com/users/9932/articles/10529/_show_article}{as it's now emerging}, should it even be. And publishers could now offer their whole catalog of journals at one discounted “Big Deal” price. In the words of Derk Haank, then Elsevier and current CEO of Springer:
\begin{quote}