I’m reminded of a book I read once by Jeffrey Archer (I know, I know, I only read one). In it, the rags-to-riches protagonist makes a gift of an enormous sack of banknotes to the kindly, forest-dwelling peasant who took him in as an orphaned babe. The shivering and impoverished woman weeps for joy. And as our hero walks away, she starts building herself a hearty blaze with the generous gift.
You see, I’ve just read Simon Lilley’s piece in the Times Higher this week, which is based on a paper he wrote for the journal, “Organization”. The paper is called “What are we to do with feral publishers?”. There he bemoans the eye-watering profit margins of commercial journal publishers (up to 53 per cent), the propensity of many such organisations to hole up in tax havens to make those profits go that bit further (every little helps), and what on earth academics can do about it (resign en masse from editorial boards and set up parallel titles elsewhere).
As I turned to my email, our exasperated Collection Development Manager had circulated some disturbing news. Apparently, the “not-for-profit” publisher of the journal “Science”, (the American Academy for the Advancement of Science) plans to increase our subscription fee to the title by 41%, to £6,200.
I sighed. I pondered. And then it all clicked into place. The publishers are feral. They should be objects of pity, not scorn. Someone just needs to tell them that there are other ways to keep warm in winter than to burn cash.
Posted by Lizzie Gadd 
the Library we are currently pondering whether separate blogs for each faculty are the way to go, or if we shouldn’t have a single blog for all of our users. Personally, we’d be sorry to say goodbye to Broadcast – but the question is – would you? If you would, grab hold of our proverbial ankles, screaming “don’t go!” using the comments box below…
Broadcast 