RomanArmyTalk

We've been here before, but it seems the knives are now out and it seems they intend going down fighting. How tempting, when I received an image permission request from one of them this morning, to send them a four-figure sum as a quote in return; sadly, it wasn't even my image they wanted to use!

Mike Bishop

I can see why: editorials about the scam in the sciences are all over bulletin boards and professional magazines, and my own university library, hardly a rabble-rousing institution, has come out for open access. Charles Stross' comments about the crisis in the fiction publishing industry come to mind too.

I couldn't help noticing that its another piece by an educated person who writes "feudal" when he wants a colourful adjective to describe an oppressive, backwards system though

Academic publishers make Murdoch look like a socialist.

Quote:Academic publishers make Murdoch look like a socialist.

Good God! I had no idea hock:

What about the other side? with ever diminishing funding and the public nonchalance/resentment the money has to come from somewhere.

See also: http://edithorial.blogspot.com/2012/01/o...ndary.html

It is clear where the publishers get their training from :



Read also :

http://www.sjtrek.com/trek/rules/

Quote:It is clear where the publishers get their training from

Indeed. We're a nation of traders. :evil:
"Since Elsevier's obscene additional profits would be drained from America to the company's base in the Netherlands if this bill were enacted, what kind of American politician would support it? The RWA is co-sponsored by Darrell Issa (Republican, California) and Carolyn B. Maloney (Democrat, New York). In the 2012 election cycle, Elsevier and its senior executives made 31 donations to representatives"

Quote:What about the other side? with ever diminishing funding and the public nonchalance/resentment the money has to come from somewhere.

See also: http://edithorial.blogspot.com/2012/01/o...ndary.html

Academic publishers are usually private companies, so I don't see how cuts to government subsidies to universities would affect them. Academic journals don't pay their authors and often expect them to provide the illustrations at their own expense. Its fairly well documented that commercial publishers have bought up prestigious natural science journals and raised the prices until the pips squeak. The Economist reports that Elsevier collected $1.57 for every dollar it spent in 2010 (source: http://www.economist.com/node/18744177/).

The problem in science is worsened by the fact that journal articles within the past five years are central to research, and that science departments have more money to divert to usurious publishers. I need articles from the 1880s and books from the 1970s for my research; I have been told that physicists and chemists do essentially all their professional reading in the last 10 years of journal issues.

On the other hand, there are a lot of small journals that charge just enough to keep in business with volunteer or very cheap labour. If journals go to an "author pays to be published, copies are free online" model then some of the money that goes to library budgets will have to go to helping junior academics pay to be published. In other words, its not fair to criticize the whole academic publishing industry the same way. Brill is not the same sort of institution as De Re Militari or the Society of Archer-Antiquaries, even though all three publish academic works.

This report may be of interest: http://www.parliament.uk/business/public...OST-PN-397

I don't like the sound of "gold publishing" -- independent scholars may not be able to afford an "article processing charge".