Last Updated on November 16, 2015, 3:51 pm ET
On November 12, 2015, ARL, together with The American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), the American Council on Education (ACE), the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL), the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR), EDUCAUSE, and the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) wrote in support of the editors of the Elsevier journal Lingua who resigned en masse on October 27, 2015. Lingua’s editors cited the journal’s price increases that outpaced costs of production and Elsevier’s refusal to transition the journal to an open access model as reasons for their resignation. The editors announced a plan to launch an open access journal and, as the letter notes, “The actions of the Lingua editors reflect the underlying values of scholarship that knowledge should be shared as widely as possible for the benefit of research and society.”
The letter continues:
As organizations committed to the principle that access to information advances discovery, accelerates innovation, and improves education, we share the significant concerns raised by the Lingua editors and we support sustainable open access models. Furthermore, research is becoming increasingly international and we must develop a system that fosters global participation, regardless of geographical location or size of institution. To that end, we strongly support the Lingua editors’ decision to pursue an alternative solution, which will better serve the needs and values of higher education and the public that sustains it.
[. . .]We firmly believe that the higher education and research communities need to collectively advance alternative models of scholarly publishing that are fair, sustainable, and transparent.
For more information, see “ARL, Higher Education Groups Support Lingua Editors, Open Access” on the ARL website.
