USDA Cancels Hundreds of Journal Subscriptions

The U.S. Division of Agriculture has canceled almost 400 of the Nationwide Agricultural Library’s roughly 2,000 journal subscriptions, Science reported this week.

The choice to cancel the subscriptions got here on the route of the Division of Authorities Effectivity, a brand new company led by South African billionaire Elon Musk who donated $288 million to President Donald Trump’s 2024 re-election marketing campaign.

The eradicated journal titles embody any of these printed by 17 presses, most of that are affiliated with universities or nonprofit scientific societies, together with Cambridge College Press; Oxford College Press; the American Phytopathological Society, and the U.S. Nationwide Academy of Sciences, which publishes the Proceedings of the Nationwide Academy of Sciences.

Nevertheless, the cuts spared journals printed by for-profit publishers Elsevier, Springer Nature and Wiley, which collectively accounted for greater than half of the library’s journal subscriptions, based on Science’s evaluation.

USDA instructed employees members Friday that although the company would contemplate restoring some of the journals, they had been solely given hours to submit justifications.

“Peer-reviewed publications are actually the cornerstones and constructing blocks of science, and taking these away from scientists at USDA is such as you’re constructing a home and pull out the inspiration: All the things else above turns into extra unstable,” stated Chris Stelzig, govt director of the Entomological Society of America. “USDA scientists are doing this work to guard the American meals provide, and it frustrates me that that’s not being acknowledged right here.”