University of California fights Nature over price increase

The California Digital Library of the University of California is threatening to cancel all its subscriptions to publications from the Nature Publishing Group and to encourage the university’s academic staff to submit their papers elsewhere for publication after a proposed 400% rise in licence fees for electronic access to journal articles.

A series of testy letters and news releases from the library and the publishing group has prompted vigorous online discussions among scientists over those fees, how to pay for publishing, and public access to academic papers.

The Nature Publishing Group has long classified the digital library, which serves the 10 University of California institutions, as a “single institution,” even though it is on several sites throughout the state, but now says that it should be classified as a consortium and pay a different rate.

The financial implications are huge. Under the current classification the library is paying a …