New Strategy: Boycott the Publisher!

University of California Los Angeles

Sometimes we need to think outside of the box.

This paper, published in the Chronicle of Higher Education, reports how the University of California Los Angeles has adopted a new strategy in its effort to negotiate with an academic publishing giant- Elsevier: boycott the publisher!  Consider publishing your papers elsewhere.

Specifically, campus officials have asked UCLA faculty members to consider declining to review and submit articles to Elsevier.

Why?  Money, of course.

The University California system's 5 year open access contract with Elsevier costs a whopping $50 million dollars.  The goal is to hit Elsevier were it hurts the most- its content.

As stated in the article: What they are selling is access to research. If they do not have the research, they have nothing to sell.

Touché

Of course, some argue that this could hurt the promotion and tenure of junior faculty.  There may be a grain of truth to this comment, however, people were previously promoted without open access publishing.