[GOAL] Re: Inside Higher Ed: All six editors and all 31 editorial board members of Lingua resign over Elsevier

[Beall, Jeffrey]

I think that Guedon's advice to "Remove access to Lingua going forward" is the moral equivalent of a book banning.

There's no moral difference between saying "Remove access to Lingua" and saying "Remove the book Heather Has Two Mommies."

I understand that all book banners (and journal banners) think they are doing the right thing and helping society.

I think it is shameful for anyone, especially a librarian, to call for the removal of content from a library.

Guedon is the modern-day equivalent of a book banner. He is pressuring libraries to ban serials, the same, morally, as banning books.

Jeffrey Beall
University of Colorado Denver

From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf Of Richard Poynder
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2015 11:59 PM
To: 'Global Open Access List' <goal at eprints.org>
Subject: [GOAL] Inside Higher Ed: All six editors and all 31 editorial board members of Lingua resign over Elsevier

I am posting this message on behalf of Jean-Claude Guédon:


The article below (thanks to Colin Steele) is an example of a courageous move that must be supported by the libraries.

With regard to the Lingua (now Glossa) editorial board, libraries could, for example,

1. Remove access to Lingua going forward (keep access to archive up to December 31st, 2015) if caught in a Big Deal; remove Lingua from subscriptions, starting in 2016, if not in a Big Deal

2. Support Glossa (the new journal) financially,

3. Promote Glossa widely. ERIH is already classifying the new journal at the level of its current status by arguing that the quality of a journal is linked to the editors and editorial board, and not to the publisher.

Researchers in linguistics, of course, should boycott Elsevier's Lingua from now on.

This event also demonstrates the importance for Learned and scientific societies not to sell the title of their journals to publishers. So long as we foolishly evaluate research according to the place where it is published (i.e. a journal title), publishers will hold a strong trump card.

Finally, this event displays the incredible behaviour of the multinational, commercial, publishers with particular clarity. These are not the friends of the scientific communication system we need.

>>

Extract from Inside Higher Ed article:

"All six editors and all 31 editorial board members of Lingua, one of the top journals in linguistics, last week resigned to protest Elsevier's policies on pricing and its refusal to convert the journal to an open-access publication that would be free online. As soon as January, when the departing editors' noncompete contracts expire, they plan to start a new open-access journal to be called Glossa."

The article can be read in full here:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/11/02/editors-and-editorial-board-quit-top-linguistics-journal-protest-subscription-fees

For a list of some of the other coverage of this issue see here: http://kaivonfintel.org/2015/11/05/lingua-roundup/

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