By Barbara Fister. For some time, librarians have questioned the wisdom of agreeing to confidentiality agreements when signing expensive subscription licenses, but many publishers seem to think they’re essential to their business practices. In 2009, Elsevier even went to court to try and stop scholars finding out what a public universities was spending on Science Direct using Washingon state's open records law. The publisher’s argument that prices were a trade secret, and such secrecy benefited libraries failed to impress the judge, who dismissed their lawsuit with prejudice. Finally we’re seeing the fruits of FOIAs in a new article recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (Though it’s not open access yet, there’s coverage in The Guardian and supplementary tables are freely accessible). Read more...

By Laura Tropp. Yesterday, I was commuting to work on an express bus when my phone vibrated. The number of my children’s school appeared on the screen. I worriedly answered and was surprised to hear my son on the phone.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hello?” I asked.
“Mom, it’s Ethan.”
“I know who it is. The question is, why are you calling?”
Then, I heard the dreaded words: “It’s my ‘un-birthday’ today, and I need the munchkins here by 11:00am.” Read more...