Dutch universities boycott Elsevier

‘Science is not a goal in itself. Just as art is only art once it is seen, knowledge only becomes knowledge once it is shared.’

So said the Dutch State Secretary for Education, Sander Dekker, in 2014. Now the Dutch universities are putting their money where their mouth is by boycotting Elsevier, the publisher best known for dubious business practices and extortionate fees.

The Dutch universities have a strong preference for Gold OA and have been unable to reach agreement with Elsevier in negotiations, so are taking action. From the University of Tilburg’s website:

As a first step in boycotting the publisher, the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU) has asked all scientists that are editor in chief of a journal published by Elsevier to give up their post. According to the VSNU in daily NRC, the reactions varied from very willing to consider this to some reluctance.

A variety of linguistics journals are published with Elsevier, including the prestigious Lingua. It will be interesting to see how linguists respond to this call.

You can read more on the potential significance of this boycott at Cambridge’s Unlocking Research blog.

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TROLLing: new open data archive

Linguists at the University of Tromsø have released a new repository for language and linguistic data, which is fully open access.

From the archive’s About page:

The Tromsø Repository of Language and Linguistics (TROLLing) is designed as an archive of linguistic data and statistical code. The archive is open access, which means that all information is available to to everyone. All postings are accompanied by searchable metadata that identify the researchers, the languages and linguistic phenomena involved, the statistical methods applied, and scholarly publications based on the data (where relevant).

Linguists worldwide are invited to post datasets and statistical models used in linguistic research. The TROLLing Steering Committee is responsible for the scientific content of the archive, whereas the University Library provides quality and relevance control, in addition to user management. The University Library also oversees the technical and legal structure of TROLLing.

You can visit the archive here. There’s also an amusing promotional video: