Elsevier, an academic journal company, is getting a failing grade from thousands of professors who have decided to boycott the company.

Academic journals used to be published by not-for-profit organizations that wanted to provide scholars and students a way to exchange ideas at litle to no cost. Because professors would submit and review content for free, larger companies saw an opportunity to make money and took over the academic publishing industry. Now 60 to 70 percent of academic journals are published by large commercial publishers, which hasn’t been good news for professors or the library, said Ada Emmett, the head of scholarly communications research for the University library system.

“The scholarly publishing system is in crisis,” Emmett said.

After years of unrest with Elsevier, one of the leading international publishers, professors reached their breaking point. In the past, articles written about research that comes from government funding have been available to everyone. However, last month several congressmen introduced the Research Works Act, which would give publishers the right to make people pay to access articles produced by taxpayer money. The congressmen had received more than 30 donations from Elsevier executives, Emmett said.

Thousands of professors from all over the world have since signed their names on thecostofknowledge.com, agreeing to boycott the publisher by not submitting or reviewing articles and refusing to do editorial work.

“I don’t think they really should exist,” said Mohamed El-Hodiri, a professor of economics who is participating in the boycott. “It’s part of a huge rip-off, basically. Elsevier is most criminal in that respect.”

El-Hodiri questions the quality of the journals and fears that much of the content is edited by people who just agree with, rather than challenge, the points presented. He said that instead of allowing big name publishers to run the academic journal industry, he would like to see academic associations produce their own journals.

One of El-Hodiri’s biggest complaints about Elsevier is that it has prevented him from accessing his own work. The company bought the rights to out-of-print journals, including one published in Italy, which contained a paper written by El-Hodiri. The company would not allow him to view his own work unless he bought back the rights.

“The idea in knowledge is dissemination, spreading the knowledge, not putting it in golden cages with the key in some idiot’s pocket,” El-Hodiri said.

Other scholars are not as convinced that Elsevier has done anything wrong. Seungly Oh, a doctoral student studying math from Busan, South Korea, recently submitted an article to the Elsevier published “Journal of Differential Equations.” He thinks most of the complaints regarding the high cost and the business practices of the company apply to most journal publishers and Elsevier should not be singled out.

“I’m personally not participating and I doubt that many of the graduate students are,” Oh said. “It’s mostly tenure tract professors that have the luxury to do this.”

Oh was conflicted about how to feel because many of the mathematics academics that he respects were decrying the company, but he knows it is critical for graduate students to get articles published in reputable journals.

“For us it’s the difference between getting a job or not,” Oh said.

Elsevier responded to the boycott in an open letter available on its website saying that its journal prices are lower than the competition and the company provides a variety of access options. The letter said that while the claims of the boycotters are inaccurate, the company will work to better serve the academic community and be more transparent.

Regardless of whether or not people decide to participate in the boycott, Emmett thinks publicizing the problems is a significant step.

“I see it as a very good thing that people become aware of what they’re doing and what impact it has on the community,” Emmett said. “Because it’s not just the community of libraries, its the community of students that want to read them, the faculty that want to read them.”

Emmett said that the library is currently buying journals from the company as a part of a multi-year contract, but might consider not renewing the subscription if students and faculty expressed that they could do without it.

— edited by Jeff Karr