The Cost of Knowledge

The Cost of Knowledge
Name	The Cost of Knowledge
Subject	Academic publishing boycott
Date	2012
Place	United Kingdom
Organisers	Anonymous (led by academics)
Method	Public petition

Contents

The Cost of Knowledge is an academic petition and grassroots movement initiated in 2012 protesting the pricing and access practices of a major academic publisher. It rapidly drew attention from scholars, institutions, and media, catalyzing debates across University of Cambridge, Harvard University, Stanford University, Oxford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other research centers about publishing models and scholarly communication. The campaign intersected with disputes involving Elsevier, Sci-Hub, arXiv, ResearchGate, PubMed Central and funding agencies such as the Wellcome Trust and the National Institutes of Health.

Background and Origins

The petition began amid controversies over subscription costs charged by Elsevier and contract negotiations with consortia including the University of California system and the Big Ten Academic Alliance. Prominent signatories included researchers affiliated with Princeton University, Yale University, Columbia University, University of California, Berkeley, Imperial College London and ETH Zurich. The movement built on earlier advocacy by organizations such as the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association and movements like Open Access proponents at SPARC and activists associated with Aaron Swartz and campaigns around the Research Works Act. Debate also referenced archival and distribution platforms like JSTOR, Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic, CrossRef and repositories in the European Research Council network.

Critics argued that subscription pricing affected libraries at institutions including University of Michigan, University of Toronto, University of Edinburgh and National University of Singapore, prompting cancellations and renegotiations with publishers such as Wiley-Blackwell, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis and Sage Publications. The situation influenced policy decisions by funders like the Wellcome Trust, the European Commission, UK Research and Innovation and the National Science Foundation. Impacts were felt across disciplines from researchers at CERN, NASA, Los Alamos National Laboratory to scholars at Bibliothèque nationale de France and museums such as the British Museum, affecting access to literature cited in grants from agencies including the Human Frontier Science Program and institutions administering awards such as the Nobel Prize committees. The debate touched employment and tenure processes at schools like Johns Hopkins University and Duke University, and library budgets in systems such as the California Digital Library.

The initiative intensified discussions among editors and boards of journals published by Elsevier, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Nature Publishing Group and society publishers like the American Chemical Society and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Prominent figures at The Lancet, Science (journal), Nature (journal), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Cell (journal) engaged in debates over peer review, editorial independence, and copyright agreements with authors from institutions including Karolinska Institutet, Max Planck Society, CNRS, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen and University of Tokyo. Discussions linked to open repositories like bioRxiv, mandates from bodies such as the Wellcome Trust, and policies at universities like McGill University and University of Melbourne.

Ethical concerns involved author rights, copyright transfer agreements with publishers including Elsevier and Springer, and legal questions surrounding access tools like Sci-Hub and the implications of litigations seen in courts such as the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and European tribunals. The movement intersected with advocacy by groups such as Electronic Frontier Foundation and considerations by lawmakers in legislative bodies including the United Kingdom Parliament, the European Parliament, and committees at the U.S. Congress. Institutional policies at King's College London, University of Oxford and University College London regarding openness and compliance with funder mandates were central to legal and ethical negotiations.

Responses included transformative agreements negotiated by consortia like the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung-linked groups, national deals in Sweden, Germany via the Projekt DEAL, and single-payer negotiations by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). Alternatives promoted included repositories (arXiv, bioRxiv, Zenodo), platform experiments by Public Library of Science (PLOS), community-led journals, and scholarly infrastructures such as CrossRef, ORCID, DOAJ and initiatives from the Coalition S movement driven by the European Commission and the European Research Council. Universities such as Utrecht University, University of California, Los Angeles and University of Sydney adopted institutional repositories and open access policies to mitigate subscription pressures.

High-profile incidents linked to the debate included contract stand-offs involving the University of California and Elsevier; boycotts led by faculty at University of California, Los Angeles and MIT; coverage by outlets like The Guardian, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Nature (journal) and Science (journal); and research by think tanks such as the Brookings Institution and RAND Corporation analyzing publishing markets. Other notable episodes involved leaked pricing data affecting negotiations at Max Planck Society, cancellations at libraries like University of Toronto and activist responses inspired by figures including Noam Chomsky and journalists at The Economist. The discourse continues to influence policies at funders including the Wellcome Trust and national strategies in countries such as France, Germany, Chile and South Africa.