Wield Your Influence With Publishers

University of California faculty serve on the editorial boards of about 15 percent of the top-tier journals, which means that they wield enormous influence with publishers.

Here’s what you can do:

Boycott unreasonably expensive journals: Examine the pricing and licensing agreements of journals you contribute to as an author, reviewer, or editor. We help you do that with price and use data about many journals in our publisher and journal profiles. If possible, refuse to contribute to or edit for journals from publishers who practice "predatory pricing."

Contribute to journals with reasonable business models: Support open access publishers and reasonably priced non-profit publishers by submitting papers to them instead of to costly commercial journals. If you are an editor of an expensive journal, consider moving your journal to a different publisher.

Talk about publishing issues with your society: Encourage your scholarly society to follow publishing best practices including maintaining reasonable prices for its journals. If your association contracts its publications to commercial publishers, suggest alternatives such as moving to a non-profit publisher. Discuss ways to support society activities from creative sources other than escalating subscription prices, which become unsustainable for library budgets.