Following investigations by the Executive Yuan's Fair Trade Commission (FTC) into Microsoft's monopoly, Microsoft has finally made a show of goodwill and proposed an administrative settlement. However, a larger and more vicious monopoly silently operates within the nation's universities and academic research institutions. It erodes their research capacity and suffocates the development of the national knowledge economy.
This monopoly is run by the publishers and representatives of printed and electronic foreign-language journals. Their annual price hikes are getting out of control. In the past, prices have at the most increased by 10 percent or so per year, something that we all have accepted.
This year, both printed and electronic journals again have seen unreasonable price increases and electronic journals have generally made a complimentary subscription to a printed journal a condition for subscription to that journal. Such ill-willed business methods are something that the FTC should investigate to find out if profiteering or illegal behavior is involved.
If Microsoft's software becomes too expensive, we can at least choose software from another company, but publishers and representatives of journals rely on being the only choice. In addition, the state and universities these days pay great attention to research results. Reference materials are necessary to conduct research. Therefore, regardless of the cost, prices still rise on an annual basis.
Who could have guessed that things would get even worse this year? Add to this the fact that the Ministry of Education (MOE) and the National Science Council (NSC) have not taken a strong position. Not only have they been unable to gather the strength of university libraries for joint negotiations with publishers, but they are also doing away with some existing subsidies.
One wonders whether libraries at every university in a place as small as Taiwan, with the convenience of transportation and the Internet, need to subscribe to similar publications. For example, the state could establish one national information center each in the northern, eastern, southern and western areas of Taiwan (or place the responsibility on the library at one institution, since even a single national institution would be sufficient).
All electronic journals could then be subscribed to by these four centers and shared via the Internet with universities and research institutions in the neighboring areas. Publishers will of course be unwilling accept this, but so long as we are united, and the NSC or the MOE handles negotiations, it should be possible to work out a solution satisfactory to both parties.
The NSC's Science and Technology Information Center currently has the Consortium on Core Electronic Resources in Taiwan, which serves some of these functions. They should have a sense of mission to take on this task. In addition, all universities should work together and wait for the result of the NSC's negotiations. They should not rely on their own wealth to rush to sign agreements with publishers and destroy the power of the collective.
If we don't find a solution, publishers may do as they please. The result is certain to be that the nation's universities and institutions for academic research will spend large amounts on overlapping journal subscriptions, or that they will be forced to cut their number of subscriptions to the point where it threatens the standard of their research capacity.
Chang Ruay-shiung is a professor at National Dong Hwa University.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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