Oxford U. Press Sheds 60 Jobs; Utah State U. Press on the Chopping Block? Nature’s New OA Initiatives
-- Library Journal, 1/22/2009 1:19:00 PM
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Tuesday, a wave of optimism accompanied the swearing in of Barack Obama as the 44th president. On Wednesday, that optimism was quickly tempered at Oxford University Press (OUP), after the nation’s largest university press laid off 60 people between its two offices in New York and Cary, NC. OUP president Tim Barton said the “cost-cutting exercise,” is “a result of the difficult economic environment impacting the publishing industry.”
The job cut is an uncharacteristic move for the historically stable press, which, throughout recessions, has rarely had go to layoffs. These are clearly unprecedented times, however, further evidenced today by Microsoft’s announcement that it will lay off 5000 workers over the next 18 months, the first job cut in the company’s history.
Between New York City and North Carolina, OUP employs roughly 700 people, and publishes approximately 500 new titles a year, approximately half of which are monographs. It was unclear at press time whether editorial staff were affected by the layoffs, but OUP spokesperson Christian Purdy told the LJ Academic Newswire that besides shedding jobs, the press was not planning cuts to its publishing program or any dramatic changes to its current strategic initiatives. Purdy said the cut was made in anticipation of contracting state and library budgets…
In addition to job cuts at Oxford, other university presses are also feeling the pinch. According to reports, the Utah State University Press (USUP) is possibly facing the loss of its $165,000 subsidy, which could potentially force the small but well-respected press, to close. As yet, no formal proposal has been made, and LJAN will keep an eye on the story as it develops. USUP publishes between 20 and 25 titles annually, including those that are part of an award-winning poetry program…
Is 2009 setting up to be banner year for open access? In addition to Springer and the University of California’s major open access deal, announced this week, the Nature Publishing Group (NPG) today said it too was expanding open access choices for authors in 2009, through both “green” (self-archiving) and “gold” (authors-pays) open access publication options.
NPG officials said 11 more of its journals will offer an open access option, starting this year, raising the total to 32 NPG journals. For a publication fee of $3000, articles will be open access on the journal website and identified in the online and print editions of the journal with an open-access icon. In addition, the final full-text version of the article will be deposited immediately on publication in PubMed Central (PMC) and authors will be entitled to self-archive the published version immediately on publication.
Some 43 journals published by NPG now offer the free manuscript deposit service. A full list of participating journals is available on nature.com.
On the acquisition front, LJAN has learned that EBSCO has signed an agreement to purchase Salem Press, a 60-year-old publisher of health, literature, and history reference books and databases known for its success in selling databases both in print and online as a package. Financial terms have not been disclosed.
Peter Tobey, Salem's VP of marketing and sales, told LJ that Salem’s workforce, which includes offices in Hackensack, NJ, and Pasadena, CA, will not be changing as a result of the sale. The sale is expected to be completed on January 30.
Salem Press is the third academic library-oriented reference publisher to be sold in the last six months, following Sage Reference’s acquisition of CQ Press in the summer of 2008 and ABC-CLIO’s acquisition of Greenwood in the fall of 2008. CQ Press and Greenwood kept their names and sales models…
For those of you off to Denver for the ALA Midwinter Meeting, be sure check out ebrary’s events—including a luncheon led by Allen McKiel, dean of library and media services at Western Oregon University, who will discuss the company’s recent surveys on various aspects of e-resource perception, usage, and need among librarians, faculty, and students. Also on the menu: topics, questions, and other aspects for a new survey. (Sat., January 24, 2009, 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Brown Palace Hotel, 321 17th St.)
Read more Newswire stories:
Study at UIUC Suggests $4.38 in Grant Income for Each Library Dollar
University of California Libraries, Springer Strike Open Access Deal
LJ Talks to Jeff Jarvis, author of What Would Google Do?
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