[Irtalk] Shocking Secrets Revealed! What Big Libraries Pay for Big Deals | Library Babel Fish @insidehighered

[Hilton Gibson]

For some time, librarians have questioned the wisdom of agreeing to
confidentiality agreements when signing expensive subscription licenses,
but many publishers seem to think they’re essential to their business
practices. In 2009, Elsevier even went to court to try and stop scholars
finding out what a public universities was spending on Science Direct using
Washingon state's open records law. *The publisher’s argument that prices
were a trade secret, and such secrecy benefited libraries failed to impress
the judge, who dismissed their lawsuit with prejudice. *Finally we’re
seeing the fruits of FOIAs in a new article recently published in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (Though it’s not open
access yet, there’s coverage in The Guardian and supplementary tables are
freely accessible.)
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http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/library-babel-fish/shocking-secrets-revealed-what-big-libraries-pay-big-deals#sthash.vO8i9mHZ.OeWTeyUJ.dpbs
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