Posts by Mark C. Wilson
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Speaker: Market failure in the research world, in reply to William Ray,
Hi Mark, do you mind saying specifically what you asked for under the OIA?
I varied the wording a little. An example (Universty of Auckland request):
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From http://statistics.caul.edu.au/inst_data.php I can see how much Auckland spends on serials (nearly $15 million in 2013 - may be in Australian $). I am interested to know:
* what UoA currently pays each of the main commercial publishers (including Elsevier, Taylor/Francis, Springer, Wiley) for journal access
* what exactly is obtained for that outlay (e.g. names of standard packages, such as those listed at http://www.elsevier.com/online-tools/sciencedirect/collections)Please supply this information, under the Official Information Act 1982.
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A further note that I didn't include in the article: I made a followup request to all the institutions ina single email, explaining why I thought the public interest outweighed their right to withhold. Amusingly, the librarians started discussing by email how to get rid of me, while not noticing (for a while) that I was being copied on all the emails. Eventually a few of them replied (maybe all) reiterating their refusal, so at that stage I went to the Ombudsman. I didn't have time to approach each one by phone andsee whether I could re-word the request to ensure success, and I doubt that would be possible anyway.