[Taxacom] Max Planck Society cancels 1,200 Springer journals

[Fabian Haas]

Good to hear that! Sometimes I actually wonder what the publishing 
houses of scientific journals do. layout+printing+posting to libraries. 
The prices of journals seem a bit hefty for these activities

Also I wonder, how the drive to Open Access will fit/collide with the 
requirements of donors and universities to publish in high impact factor 
journals. So if you publish open access, then you impact factor will be 
low, and ... okay we all know the rest.

is there an high impact factor Open Access journal?

best
Fabian


Neal Evenhuis wrote:
> FYI.
>
>   
>> =====================
>> Richard Sietmann, Max Planck Society terminates licensing contract with
>> Springer publishing house
>> <http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/97652>, Heise Online,
>> October 19, 2007.
>>
>> Following several fruitless rounds of talks the Max Planck
>> Society (MPG <http://www.mpg.de>) has, effective January 1, 2008,
>> terminated the online contract with the Springer publishing house which
>> for eight years now has given all institutes electronic access to some
>> 1,200 scientific journals. The analysis of user statistics and
>> comparisons with other important publishing houses had shown that
>> Springer was charging twice the amount the MPG still considered
>> justifiable for access to the journals, the Society declared. "And that
>> 'justifiable' rate is still higher than comparable offers of other major
>> publishing houses," a spokesman of the Max Planck Digital Library
>> <http://www.mpdl.mpg.de/>  told heise online....
>>
>> According to the MPG the failure of the talks with Springer
>> marks "what for now is the high point" in a dispute with a number of
>> globally operating scientific publishing houses. The soaring prices in
>> the scientific information domain have already caused a change of
>> attitude in a number of players. Thus MPG is one of the initiators of
>> the "Berlin Declaration
>> <http://oa.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html>  on Open
>> Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and the Humanities" -- the key
>> demand of which is open access to the results of publicly funded
>> research -- which to date has been signed by more than 240 scientific
>> organizations.
>>
>> When publishing houses have the market power to charge excessive
>> prices and the legislator is unwilling to subject such inappropriate
>> behavior to any form of legal control the only course that remains is
>> for the scientific community to take matters into its own hands, the MPG
>> stated. "Even at the very last minute the Springer publishing house had
>> not been prepared to lower its inflated prices," MPG Vice President Kurt
>> Mehlhorn said. "The MPG therefore had had no other option but to
>> terminate the contract," he added.
>>     
>
>
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