[open-science] Finland takes a leading role in the openness of academic journal pricing

Tue Jun 14 10:13:26 UTC 2016

Well done - thanks to all involved!

Daniel

On Tue, Jun 14, 2016 at 10:55 AM, Leo Lahti <leo.lahti at iki.fi> wrote:
> This might be of interest for some on the list if you did not bump into it
> already. / Leo Lahti
>
> From the MostlyPhysics blog:
> http://www.mostlyphysics.net/blog/2016/6/13/finland-takes-leading-role-in-the-openness-of-academic-journal-pricing
>
> Freedom of Information request by open science advocates has revealed
> academic journal pricing through an administrative court decision. Finland
> is the first country where the subscription prices paid by practically all
> universities and research institutions to individual publishers are made
> available. This strengthens the position of universities in the 2016
> contract negotiations, made ever more timely by the recent deep funding
> cuts. Comparisons between publishers and countries also supports the ongoing
> discussion of alternative publishing models and directing funding towards
> open access (OA) publishing.
>
> The costs of academic journals have risen precipitously, but the lack of
> detailed pricing information has made the overall situation difficult to
> perceive. There are significant price differences between publishers,
> universities and countries. While dominant publishing houses have reported
> profit margins of tens of percent and the industry is ever more
> concentrated, university libraries including Harvard have reached a fiscally
> unsustainable situation. This has in part contributed to the ongoing
> breakthrough of open access.
>
> In the spring of 2014, the conclusion that contract prices should be public
> also in Finland was reached in a discussion group of the Open Knowledge
> Finland (OKF) association. In the summer, researcher and open science
> advocate Leo Lahti made a Freedom of Information request to Aalto and other
> Finnish universities on behalf of the OKF. The universities themselves would
> stand to benefit from the openness, making negotiations more transparent and
> potentially resulting in cost savings.
>
> None of the universities supplied the requested information. The fear of
> publisher legal action may have prevented them from following their own
> principles of openness, because for example Aalto refused to even provide an
> appealable decision, denied having acted as a public institution covered by
> the openness laws, and finally tried to transfer its responsibility to the
> National Library. Open science advocates brought the matter to the Helsinki
> administrative court, which predictably confirmed that the prices of
> subscription contracts are public information. Similar demands for openness
> had been made previously; national and university-level figures are
> available for some countries, but detailed publisher-specific information
> has only been made public in the UK and the USA. In the end, the Open
> Science and Research Initiative (ATT) of the Ministry of Education and
> Culture took responsibility for gathering the Finnish pricing data.
>
> After this two-year process Finland is now amongst the first countries where
> publisher- specific prices have been made public in detail over several
> years. The material includes the costs of 266 publisher titles for all
> universities and dozens of other institutions, the total sum of which in
> 2010-2015 was 131.1 million euros. A more detailed analysis can be found in
> a separate post. Special thanks are due to the Finnish open science
> community, whose initiative and perseverance was required to fulfill the
> spirit of the openness laws.
>
> Links:
>
> Data on the subscription costs in Finland 2010-2015
>
> Announcement on the data release (ATT)
>
> Preliminary analysis of the pricing
>
> Public documents related to the Freedom of Information request (OKF)
>
>
>
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