Some Recommendations:

Be Smart Shoppers. Investigate alternatives to the current for-profit systems, and use them whenever possible. Encourage flexibility in library collections/policies, rather than focusing on the number of books and resources. Use market power to leverage better prices from vendors. Check the subscription price a journal charges before submitting your work there. Refuse to review for or serve on the editorial boards of predatory journals.

Know Your Rights and Insist on Them. Negotiate to retain or regain some of the rights now routinely surrendered when publishing your work: things like the right to use your own work in course packets, to distribute copies to students in your class or post it on your website or your university's. (See this model for adding to the standard publishing contract language, or consult the list of model copyright policies at John Hopkins University.)

End the Preoccupation with Numbers. Focus on the quality of work and less on the quantity in making hiring, tenure, and promotion decisions. The number of journals has steadily increased as more and more publications become the requirement for advancement in academic careers, but the number of "leading journals" has remained virtually unchanged.

Invest in Electronic and Other Alternative Forms of Scholarly Communication. This may include establishing new journals, such as the new chemistry journal, Organic Letters, that is taking on the established Tetrahedron Letters and winning.

 

Other University Sites Focusing on Scholarly Communication

John Hopkins University

University of Maryland

University of Washington

University of Virginia

University of Connecticut

University of Kansas

University of Tennessee