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Scientists call for a boycott of Cell Press

New York Jeanne Lenzer

Two research scientists at the University of California at San Francisco have called for a boycott of Cell Press publications, saying the price for electronic access is exorbitant. Peter Walter and Keith Yamamoto, both professors at the University of California in San Francisco, have asked fellow scientists to stop submitting papers to Cell Press and to resign from the editorial boards of Cell Press, among other actions.

Cell Press, owned by Elsevier, publishes nine journals, including Cell and Neuron. Lynne Herndon, president and chief executive officer of Cell Press, said their pricing is reasonable as they estimate their charges at $1.50 (90p; €1.30) per journal per subscriber per year.

But the additional $90 000 a year demanded by Elsevier for access to Cell Press at the University of California comes on top of the $8m that the library already pays annually for electronic access to Elsevier’s other scientific journals. Professor Walter, chairman of biochemistry and biophysics, says this pricing is excessive.

California Digital Library, which handles the university’s journal subscriptions, has been in negotiations with Cell Press for over five years. After Professor Walter and Professor Yamamoto, who is professor and chairman of cellular and molecular pharmacology, complained, Cell Press gave free access to its journals but withdrew that access when negotiations stalled.

The boycott, says Professor Walter, is "resonating incredibly well." Immediately after the announcement of the boycott, Cell Press gave free access again. Ms Herndon says that 500 subscribers have already taken advantage of that free access, which she states is a "demonstration of our good faith in proceeding with these negotiations."

But the boycott is still on, says Professor Walter. "We’ve been there before. We’d like to have the contract in place before we call the boycott off."

Professor Walter, who is a member of the editorial board of the Public Library of Science (PLoS), wants to see an open access publishing model to reduce excessive costs and to increase access to the world’s scientific literature. Elsevier, the market leader in the $7b a year scientific and medical publishing industry, has profit margins of nearly 40% on its core journals.

Such profits are incompatible with the free flow of information that is critical to scientists, Professor Walter says. "Electronic access is essential. It’s much more than a luxury. There is stuff—appendices, supplemental material, videos, databases—we can’t get in the print version that we simply must have in order to do our work."

Joel Lexchin, associate professor at the School of Health Policy and Management, York University, said: "The issues raised by the boycott against Cell Press and the open access journals put out by PLoS are illustrative of the conflicts that are generated when academia and commercialism meet."

"On the one hand, Cell Press is charging an outrageous amount to allow researchers to have online access to its journals and on the other hand, in order for PLoS to be able to offer free online journals it has to allow advertising on the web sites of its journals. Neither situation is acceptable."

Professor Walter counters: "Given where we are now, a few advertisements are a small price to pay. I’d be happy to tolerate quite a number of them, if it means that everyone can have access to the literature."

But both agree that more public funding is necessary so that open access publishers can continue to provide free online access.
 
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