Global libraries put cash into fight over price hikes

University librarians have launched a project to help speed the creation of electronic journals by academics worldwide.

The Scientific Communities Initiative will offer grants totalling $500,000 (Pounds 312,500) for e-journal publishing ventures in science, technology and medicine.

The SCI has been launched by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, an international grouping of university libraries that includes the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Ireland and Australia.

One of SCI's key objectives is to undermine the monopoly of commercial publishers, which between them have imposed average price hikes of 10-15 per cent annually on scholarly journals, severely disrupting university library finances worldwide.

Washington-based Rick Johnson, coalition enterprise director, said: "The SCI project is the natural outcome of our mission to make scholarly communications accessible again. "Prices of scientific journals have spiralled out of control in part because the scientific community no longer has sovereignty over its research. Our aim is to reverse that trend by giving scientists high-quality alternatives that exploit changes and opportunities in today's information environment."

The scheme also wants to exploit the potential of digital technologies to speed up publication of research papers and allow many more people cheap, rapid access to scholarly communications.

The consortium says project grants will be given to bids that "offer a promising strategic alternative to inefficiencies in the current, traditional scientific communication process".

University libraries in the UK are represented in the consortium by the Standing Conference of National and University Libraries. Its secretary, Toby Bainton, said: "The system of scholarly communication is not as yet on the point of collapse, but is unstable and we need to bring down the costs. " Fred Friend, chair of the SCONUL's scholarly communications committee, said the initiative "shows the international library community wants to support academic publishing ventures which provide good value".

Projects qualifying for support must be operated on a non-profit basis, mainly in academia. The first tranche of awards will be worth about $100,000 each. E-journals will address the needs of scientists both as authors and information users.