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We received an email from our university library stating that they plan to drop subscriptions to the following journals. These are some of the best journals published by independent sources. Of course, the library does not touch any journals from big private publishers like Elsevier or Springer, because those are all bundled. I'm wondering if other people have faced similar situation, and what we can do as a community to address this.

FYI this is one of the wealthiest universities in the world with a yearly revenue of two Billion Dollars!

Acta Arithmetica (Institute of Mathematics, Polish Academy of Sciences)
Astérisque (Societe Mathematique de France)
Fundamenta Mathematicae (Institute of Mathematics, Polish Academy of Sciences)
Algebra & Number Theory
Algebraic & Geometric Topology
Algebraic Statistics [new journal, subscriptions start in 2023]
Analysis & PDE
Annals of K-Theory
Communications in Applied Math. and Computational Science
Geometry & Topology
Innovations in Incidence Geometry
Involve: a journal of mathematics
Mathematics and Mechanics of Complex Systems
Moscow Journal of Combinatorics and Number Theory
Probability and Mathematical Physics [new journal, subscriptions start in 2023]
Pure and Applied Analysis
Tunisian Journal of Mathematics
Algebraic Geometry
Annales de l'Institut Henri Poincaré (C) Analyse Non Lineaire
Annales de l’Institut Henri Poincaré (D) Combinatorics, physics and their interactions
Commentarii Mathematici Helvetici
Documenta Mathematica: Journal der Deutschen Mathematiker-Vereinigung
Elemente der Mathematik
EMS Surveys in Mathematical Sciences
European Mathematical Society Magazine
Groups, Geometry, and Dynamics
Interfaces and Free Boundaries
Journal of Combinatorial Algebra
Journal of Fractal Geometry
Journal of Noncommutative Geometry
Journal of Spectral Theory
Journal of the European Mathematical Society
L’Enseignement Mathématique
Mathematical Statistics and Learning
Memoirs of the European Mathematical Society
Oberwolfach Reports
Portugaliae Mathematica
Publications of the Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences
Quantum Topology
Rendiconti del Seminario Matematico della Università di Padova
Rendiconti Lincei
Revista Matemática Iberoamericana
Zeitschrift für Analysis und ihre Anwendungen

Timothy Chow
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Dr. Evil
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    How many administrators would they have fire to pay for the canceled subscriptions? – bof Oct 25 '23 at 05:49
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    I don’t know if I can get banned/sued/whatever for saying this outright, nor do I really care; just use scihub. – Alec Rhea Oct 25 '23 at 06:00
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    I am really wondering how exactly these kind of decisions are made. – Vladimir Dotsenko Oct 25 '23 at 07:28
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    Do they have a document procurement service that is free to you? If not, you should make a fuss. Even though there are many journals my library doesn't have subscriptions for, they will get me a copy of practically anything, usually within 24 hours. – Brendan McKay Oct 25 '23 at 08:09
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    My instinct is that the most effective approach in the short term is to organize a faculty protest. If the university is not desperately short of money, and is not hopelessly dysfunctional, a vigorous faculty protest stands a reasonable chance of getting such a decision reversed. – Timothy Chow Oct 25 '23 at 13:28
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    This was answered here: https://mathoverflow.net/a/240177/28128 – Mikhail Katz Oct 25 '23 at 13:30
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    @MikhailKatz: That answer is totally irrelevant. The list above includes some journals that are so important that I cannot imagine a research-oriented math department functioning without access to then (eg, JEMS, G&T, Commentariii). – Andy Putman Oct 25 '23 at 13:42
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    @Andy , the point is that libraries lost control over their inventories. They committed themselves to (or more precisely were lured into) the "great deal" with greedy publishers. The latter have been steadily increasing prices, making it impossible for the libraries to maintain other subscriptions. Furthermore, the math libraries are typically tied into the university library system, and have no option of breaking away from what once thought of as a "great deal". – Mikhail Katz Oct 25 '23 at 13:48
  • @MikhailKatz : Greedy publishers will be greedy publishers for as long as academia is organized and run in a way that doesn't make sense. The blame for that does not belong first to the publishers. – Michael Hardy Oct 25 '23 at 21:26
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    @Dr. Evil, Do you also know the figure of how much those listed independent journals actually cost in total? I think that will drive the point even more if you do some protest. Or is that inaccessible information? – Thomas Kojar Oct 25 '23 at 22:50
  • @MichaelHardy, some universities at the time actually did resist the trend. As far as I recall, Cornell did not fall for the "big deal", and retained its independence. – Mikhail Katz Oct 26 '23 at 12:32
  • @AlecRhea Something like scihub can address the immediate need of a scholar seeking a particular paper, but it doesn't address the loss of income of the journals that are dropped, and it also risks enabling this kind of undesirable behavior on the part of university administrations. – Timothy Chow Oct 26 '23 at 15:09
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    @Thomas Kojar....The library email specified that these journals have a 5% price increase this year. This is the reason given for letting go of the subscription. We have asked for further clarification, including how much the price of bundles has increased over the past few years. – Dr. Evil Oct 26 '23 at 21:33

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