Concerns About Wiley-Blackwell Merger

December 4, 2006 on 11:51 am | In Journals, Science News & Hot Topics |

From today’s Chronicle of Higher Education:

Planned Merger of 2 Big Journal Publishers Worries Many Academic Librarians

But if Wiley and Blackwell are enjoying a quasi-marital bliss, research librarians are expressing anxiety and dismay at yet another step in the consolidation of the academic-publishing industry. The latest deal is causing special concern because Blackwell has been broadly regarded as the most benign of the for-profit scholarly publishers, and librarians are uncertain whether Blackwell’s prices and practices will survive the merger.

So if Wiley is willing and able to ratchet up the prices of its newly acquired Blackwell journals to the company norm, then [university librarian at the University of Illinois at Chicago] Ms. Case is correct: Libraries can expect bruising price increases. But there will be no change, in any event, for at least a year. The companies have said that their prices and licensing agreements for 2007 will be unaffected by the merger.