Angry reactions after cancellation collective UvA subscription to ScienceGuide
The independent online medium for higher education Science Guide is no longer accessible free of charge to UvA staff: the university cancelled its collective subscription on 1 January. Staff at UvA are not happy with this decision.
Since 1 January, UvA staff, students and former staff members can no longer use the online medium for higher education, ScienceGuide, free of charge. This has led to angry reactions from various UvA staff members who feel deprived of news from The Hague (i.e. parliamentary and ministerial) news, concerning higher education now that the collective subscription paid for by the UvA – which everyone could use – has been terminated.
“I am very angry about this,” says UvA professor of computational humanities and history of the humanities Rens Bod. “My anger stems mainly from the fact that the cancellation of the collective subscription means that an important source of information has been lost for both staff and students. ScienceGuide is pre-eminently the medium that systematically reports on national political developments in higher education.”
Bod believes that, especially now that major cutbacks and shifts in higher education policy are on the horizon, it is essential to remain well informed about what is happening in The Hague. “That information is not or hardly available in the same way through other media.”
Open Government Act
“This is in line with the universities' policy of seeking exemption from the Open Government Act (in Dutch: Woo): no prying eyes, no right to information via the independent press, so that not only citizens but also the university’s own staff lack the orientation and frame of reference needed to critically assess the university’s administration and policy,” says Iris Breetvelt, a retired research assistant who is also angry.
Bod adds: “Without access to ScienceGuide, our students and staff are missing out on essential information about the system they are part of.” Last year, the UvA paid €9,500 for the subscription.
Trouw
ScienceGuide editor-in-chief Frans van Heest confirms that the UvA has cancelled its subscription and, unsurprisingly, does not think this is a good thing. “UvA staff were among our most loyal readers, and they were not the least important ones either: mainly scientists, administrators and policy officers.” He expects that the UvA will rejoin in due course. “The VU University also cancelled their subscription, but there was so much internal criticism that they decided to renew it after all.” Iris Breetvelt, a long-standing member of the Central Works Council (COR) during her career at the UvA, has raised the issue with the COR.
A lot of discussion
A spokesperson for the UvA says in response that there has been “a lot of discussion” about the collective subscription “from the outset”, both within the UvA and nationally. “At the time, the University Library took out a subscription for a period of two years. When the time came to renew, the UvA decided not to do so. This is mainly due to the principle that we do not pay journalists for what they write. It is the role and task of the press to exercise their supervisory role; we cooperate with this, but we do not finance it.”
