[open-science] Join new boycott against Elsevier: no deal, no review

Fri Jun 16 08:56:45 UTC 2017

See the boycott website at www.nodealnoreview.org

Dear all,

Some of you may be aware of a  national petition campaign a group of us
Open Knowledge FInland open science wg affiliated people ran last fall
against big deals, www.tiedonhinta.fi. It was very successful in terms of
attracting a lot of signatories, 2700 researchers from early careers to
university rectors, which is big for Finland, but not surprisingly it
didn't make Elsevier drop prices and go all open access.

So now we are going from words to deeds and declaring a boycott against
Elsevier at www.nodealnoreview.org. We urge researchers to refrain from
free labor for Elsevier journals, i. e. acting as reviewers and editors.
Thus the name of the campaign: no deal, no review.

Since the struggle for fair prices and openness is an international
concern, as f.e friends in Germany are well aware, we wanted to make the
boycott open to everyone, not just members of the Finnish research
community. Please join the boycott and spread the word in your networks. To
create buzz in social media, use hashtag #nodealnoreview.

I will be happy to answer all your questions, so don't hesitate to contact
me!

Best wishes,
Heidi Laine
Contact Person
www.nodealnoreview.org

An international news release about the boycott below (published at
http://www.nodealnoreview.org/2017/06/15/no-deal-no-review/)

The group behind Tiedonhinta.fi <http://www.tiedonhinta.fi/> statement
urges researchers to refrain from peer review and editorial duties for
journals owned by publishing giant Elsevier.

The boycott is launched on a new website nodealnoreview.org
<http://www.nodealnoreview.org/>. The site welcomes also signatures from
international colleagues all around the world, who are worried about cost
of and access to research literature in their own countries.

Tiedonhinta.fi statement, published in November 2016, quickly gained over
2700 signatures. It’s aim was to support library consortium FinELib while
it negotiated with publishers to stop the unsustainable rise of
subscription fees and mainstream open access publishing.

Finnish research libraries paid about 27 million euros in subscription fees
in 2015, and the fees have been increasing at a 10 % yearly rate.

With the No deal, no review boycott, the organisers wish to both continue
the show of support and extend it to negotiators beyond Finland, who are
facing similar difficulties with so called big deals, especially with
Elsevier.

Two thirds, or about 1800 of the Tiedonhinta.fi signatories were prepared
to boycott the publishers if negotiations failed and led to the termination
of subscriptions. In December 2016, FinELib stated that negotiations with
three publishers, Elsevier, Wiley and ACS would not come to a satisfactory
conclusion before the end of the current subscription period. The current
contracts were extended by a year to ensure Finnish researchers’ access to
literature while the negotiations continue in 2017.

While the negotiators have been able to make progress with the other two
publishers, Elsevier has continued to profess lack of regard for FinELibs
and Finnish research community’s wishes and interests. Instead of moving
forward the negotiations have actually taken steps back, with Elsevier
pulling back on what few concessions on prices and open access it has made
during previous stages of the process.

As it stands it looks increasingly likely, that at least with Elsevier,
2017 will end similarly to 2016: with no deal.

– The statement has already shown that our research community wants to stop
the unjustified rise of subscription fees and increase the accessibility
and societal impact of research. By launching the boycott, we are moving
from words to deeds, campaign contact person Heidi Laine says.

You can subscribe to the campaign newsletter at http://eepurl.com/cSPMlT
-- 
Heidi Laine

*Doctoral Candidate* / University of Helsinki / Doctoral Programme in
Political, Societal and Regional Change (PSRC) / www.thehonestbrokerblog.org

*Project Manager* / Open Knowledge Finland / Open Citizen Science Project /
http://fi.okfn.org/projects/open-citizen-science/

*Secretary */ Finnish Committee for Research Data / www.fcrd.fi

E-mail: heidi.laine at helsinki.fi / heidi.laine at okf.fi /
heidi.k.laine at gmail.com
Tel. +358 (0) 40 513 95 93
Twitter: @heidiklaine
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