JLA Editorial Board Resigns Due To Taylor Francis Copyright Issue

According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, Wired Campus,  the editor and entire editorial board of the Journal of Library Administration resigned in response to a conflict with the Taylor & Francis author agreement that the board believed was “too restrictive and out fo step with the expectation of authors.”

Damon Jaggers told The Chronicle that the Taylor Francis author agreement and licensing terms scared potential authors away making it difficult to attract quality authors.  Not only was this a problem for potential authors but even a member of the editorial board who was was concerned about publishing and licensing. 

In the blog post, The Journal of Library Administration, Jason Griffey describes his concerns in detail after reading the Taylor & Francis author agreeement sent to him by Brian Mathews (guest editor for special issue of the journal).

I’ll be blunt: there is no situation in which I’d sign copyright over the T&F…or, frankly, anyone. I’m very happy to sign a license of limited exclusivity (say, 30-90 days) for publication, or license the work generally under a CC license and give T&F a specific exemption on NC so they can publish it. But their language about “Our belief is that the assignment of copyright in an article by the author to us or to the proprietor of a journal on whose behalf we publish remains the best course of action for proprietor and author alike, as assignment allows Taylor & Francis, without ambiguity, to assure the integrity of the Version of Scholarly Record, founded on rigorous and independent peer review. ” is just…well, bollocks.

According to a post from Chris Bourg (an editor for JLA), Jaggers tried to work with Taylor & Francis on their licensing terms and try and make a change from within.  Unfortunately he was not successful.

Damon continued to try to convince Taylor & Francis (on behalf of the entire Editorial Board, and with our full support), that their licensing terms were too confusing and too restrictive. A big part of the argument is that the Taylor & Francis author agreement is a real turn-off for authors and was handicapping the Editorial Board’s ability to attract quality content to the journal. The best Taylor & Francis could come up with was a less restrictive license that would cost authors nearly $3000 per article. The Board agreed that this alternative was simply not tenable, so we collectively resigned. In a sense, the decision was as much a practical one as a political one.

On Friday the board resigned and the resignations were announced Satruday in a email sent to JLA contributors.  Jaggers told to The Chronicle, “the editor and the board memebers have not heard back from Taylor & Francis since their resignations.”

Other articles or posts on the JLA issue:

Please let me know if there are new articles or any updated information.

 

 

 

One thought on “JLA Editorial Board Resigns Due To Taylor Francis Copyright Issue”

  1. Makes me wonder about their medical journals: Journal of Hospital Librarianship and the Journal of Electronic Resources in Medical Libraries. Those editorial board members are all medical librarians.

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