June 24, 2009
Elsevier, the world’s largest publisher of medical and scientific literature, lost it bid to keep its contract with WSU secret.
From the Association of Research Libraries:
Whitman County Superior Court, State of Washington, ruled Friday, June 19, 2009, in favor of full disclosure for a public-records request submitted to Washington State University by Ted Bergstrom, Paul Courant, and Preston McAfee for license information regarding the WSU-Elsevier contract. On June 9, Elsevier had filed a Motion for Injunction against release of the data. According to court papers, the plaintiff argued that disclosure of the Elsevier-WSU contracts would “disclose aspects of Elsevier’s pricing methods and formula so as to produce private gain and public loss. Such disclosure would violate Elsevier’s rights under Washington statutes…to preserve the confidentiality of its proprietary pricing methods and formulae.”
“We could see no reason why the open-records request should not be fulfilled in this case,” said Jay Starratt, Dean of Libraries, Washington State University. “As a member of ARL’s Scholarly Communication Committee, I am interested in the results of the data analysis being conducted by the researchers.”
Researchers Ted Bergstrom, Professor of Economics, University of California, Santa Barbara, and Paul Courant, University Librarian, Dean of Libraries, and Professor of Public Policy, Economics, and Information, University of Michigan, said, “We believe that state open-access laws serve the public interest by requiring full transparency of contracts that involve millions of taxpayer dollars. We will continue to collect and analyze the terms of ‘Big Deal’ contracts signed by a large number of universities and to share this information with the library community
We are glad to see that Elsevier’s injunction was rejected. Government contracts, statistics, or almost any info should be made available to anyone free of charge. That is half the reason Cougster exists, to provide more transparency in WSU related matters. Thanks to DigitalKoans where we first found out about this story.
December 15, 2008
The always fun FCC is warning of the dangerous of the internet and World of Warcraft, blaming the game for causing some kids to dropout of college. We usually are not in agreement with the FCC but we actually know some who have dropped out partly do to WoW…so there is at least some truth to Federal Communications Commissioner Deborah Taylor’s speech at the Telecom Policy and Regulation Institute.
Read more about it here.
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September 5, 2008
The new chief eonomist for the State of Washington, is Arun Raha a WSU PhD grad. From UW’s Capital Update:
Arun Raha, Vice President for Economic Research and Consulting at
Swiss Re in New York was named yesterday as the state’s second “chief
economist” the person who decides how much general fund money the
Governor and the Legislature will have to write the state budget. At
Swiss Re (the world’s largest reinsurer headquartered in Zurich) Raha
was responsible for forecasts of North American macroeconomic,
financial and property-casualty markets. Prior to joining Swiss Re,
Raha managed Economic Analysis at Eaton Corporation in Cleveland and
also served on the Ohio Governor’s Council of Economic Advisors.
Raha earned his PhD in Economics at Washington State University
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August 13, 2008
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Tonight we asked Governor Gregiore about her thoughts on the proposal by UW that the state give it $150 million for Husky stadium. Not surprisingly she did not answer directly if she supports it. She did say that for it to have a chance of happening UW would have to show and stress that the current stadium is not safe. She also referred to “research/studies” commissioned by UW administrators that will show the stadium will bring in more money for local businesses than it costs. We then asked her wouldn’t that money be spent anyway if UW just played in the $400 million+ Qwest Field, she replied very firmly that the UW board/administrators “would never do that.”
The Governor was quick to point out that the Husky stadium situation was different than the Sonics/Key Arena situation and she seemed more receptive to helping UW. This being said, we asked her this question at an event 1 mile away from the UW campus so being a politician we would are not surprised that she would at least sound receptive to an idea when she is in an area that would favor it. Of course it is doubtful that she will ever have to deal with it as the legislature has not been keen to take up this issue and only a few of its members are active backers of a funding proposal.
Bottom line is she doesn’t ever think that UW will agree to play at Qwest. If no money comes from the legislature, UW might be forced to actually pay for their own stadium, what a radical idea!
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