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A physics professor at Florida State University has decided to keep his scientific opinions to himself, as a way of making a point.
Mark A. Riley has quit as a volunteer reviewer for the journal Nuclear Physics A, published by Elsevier Science, to protest the expense of scientific journals. "I felt uncomfortable being a referee, when I work at an institution that is suffering because of the high prices," he says, adding that Florida State has had to slash the number of its journal subscriptions.
Charles E. Miller, director of libraries at Florida State, says the university spends more than $18,000 a year to subscribe to Nuclear Physics A and Nuclear Physics B, which must be purchased together. (Nuclear Physics A costs the library $7,234 per year; Nuclear Physics B costs $11,267.) The school spends upwards of $3-million a year for 11,000 journal titles, he says.
Mr. Miller notes that Nuclear Physics A and B are two of the more expensive journals to which Florida State subscribes, but Mr. Riley emphasizes that his protest...