Université de Montréal (UdeM) Libraries are cancelling their subscription to the journal Communications in Mathematical Physics to stay within their allocated budget for Springer/Nature journals. This decision is the result of Springer/Nature imposing annual cost increases that are 66% higher than the Canadian consumer price index (CPI); to compensate would require jeopardizing the UdeM book budget.
The prime objective of the Collections Department remains to provide full access to Springer/Nature journals at a price that takes into consideration the following: only 11.6% of those titles are deemed essential for research and teaching at UdeM. Unfortunately, the publisher still refuses to adopt an approach that other major publishers have agreed to in recent years.
According to Richard Dumont, UdeM Libraries Director: “Speaking to shareholders last April, Springer/Nature demonstrated very eloquently its view on commercializing knowledge: We [Springer Nature] also aim at increasing APCs by increasing the value we offer to authors through improving the impact factor and reputation of our existing journals. Further, we intend to employ a price differentiation strategy by tailoring APCs to the discipline and impact factor of the relevant journal, taking advantage of the high number of journals in our portfolio with a high impact factor. Therefore, only wealthy authors will have the means to publish in prestigious journals. Springer/Nature’s view is far from the academic values of sharing and openness.”
A substantial portion of Communications in Mathematical Physics is available via channels other than the Springer/Nature platform. In fact, 66% of its articles are available in open access and easy to find using the tool Unpaywall.org. Content published between 1997 and 2017 is also still available to the UdeM community on the publisher’s platform. Finally, the interlibrary loan (ILL) service provides articles through email free of charge within approximately 48 hours.
For more information:
- Nouvelle ère pour les collections
- List of maintained subscriptions (Access limited to UdeM community | Public access)
- List of cancelled subscriptions (Access limited to UdeM community)