Academic publishers reap huge profits as libraries go broke

 'Oligarchy' of publishers

5 companies publish more than 50 per cent of research papers, study finds

(53 per cent of scientific papers, 70 per cent of papers in the social sciences)

Larivière says the cost of the University of Montreal's journal subscriptions is now more than $7 million a year  – ultimately paid for by the taxpayers and students who fund most of the university's budget. Unable to afford the annual increases, the university has started cutting subscriptions, angering researchers.
"The big problem is that libraries or institutions that produce knowledge don't have the budget anymore to pay for [access to] what they produce," Larivière said.

 Vincent Larivière, University of Montreal           From: CBC News June 15th 2015 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/

The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era

Essentially, they've become an oligarchy, Larivière and co-authors Stefanie Haustein and Philippe Mongeon say in a paper published last week in the open access, non-profit journal PLOS ONE.

Quality not quantity – Measuring the impact of research

Quality not quantity – Measuring the impact of research

Snippets from Warwick Anderson:

 Now more than a decade old, open access is changing where researchers publish and, more importantly, how the wider world accesses – and assesses – their work.

The open access movement is having a significant impact too on how we measure the impact of scientific research.
 
The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, which has now been signed by thousands of individual researchers and organisations, come out with such a strong statement earlier this year:
“Do not use journal-based metrics, such as Journal Impact Factors, as a surrogate measure of the quality of individual research articles, to assess an individual scientist’s contributions, or in hiring, promotion or funding decisions.”

Nothing stays the same in science and research. Publishing is set to change further. The democratisation of publishing began with the internet and has a long way yet to run. The challenge for researchers, institutions and funders will be to identify, protect and encourage quality and integrity.
 
 Warwick Anderson is professor and CEO at the National Health and Medical Research Council in Australia. This article, “Quality not quantity: Measuring the impact of published research”, was originally published on 18 September in The Conversation. Read the original article.

South African open access policy - a comparative overview

South African open access policy - a comparative overview

  Paper presented by Eve Gray at a Wits University research policy seminar on 9 November 2012. 

At the end of the day, the university signed the Berlin Declaration and announced that it would be adopting open access as a core component of its new research strategy."

The cost of knowledge

The cost of knowledge - editorial in Ergonomics SA, 2012, 24 (1) by Dr Candice Christie - HOD of HKE Dept and editor-in-chief of Ergonomics SA.