This might as well be the only social/economical problem, which manages to make me angry. Not, because of the money wasted, which was supposed to go to education and research. Governments have invented all kinds of worse ways to blow money. Not, because of my believe that access to science is supposed to be free and open to everyone. There are more essential things like human rights and access to clean drinking water, which should be universal, but still they are not.
What makes me angry about it, is that it is such an unnecessary problem. It is just such a bad instance of the tragedy of the commons. Everyone recognizes what a bad situation it is, but no one feels they are in the position to do something about it.
Imagine the top 100 universities in the world, or even just the Ivory League, sat together and signed an agreement, that they would prohibit their staff to publish in non-free journals and that they would stop subscribing to them. I think this problem would sort itself out instantly. Same thing if the funding agencies of the EU and US would sit together.
Anyway, it seems like finally something happening about it, which is great.
Looking backwards, rather than forwards, the people best placed to do something about what has already happened are "The Pirate Bay". Surely it couldn't be too hard to obtain copies of all the papers to date and put them online?
Another option might be for researchers to post screenshots of every paper read to Freenet. Over time, the collection would build into something useful.
Does software exist to strip stenography and DRM out of documents? Maybe reduce it to ASCII or TeX, then do a brand new reformat?
Something related happened a few months ago. A heap of old papers which have long since entered the public domain, but where locked behind paywalls, were leaked. There's a statement accompanying the torrent[1], speaking up against the outrage that is the academic publishing system. It's still quite well seeded, me being among the people who spare bandwidth for it.
As a hard-science researcher, I've long thought that scientists should fight for the right to publish their findings (report, data...etc) to an open source github-like service, in addition to the scientific publications they already submit their work to.
By open-sourcing knowledge, humanity benefits. However, publishers prestige currently has everyone locked in a vicious cycle of publishing under-any-circumstance for the sake of career recognition. Is that really the end goal of scientific discovery?
They need to add an education category. There is actually research on education, believe it or not. Here's my signing note:
I do educational research and development, and the lack of open access to research on effective teaching and learning techniques has had far reaching and negative consequences. See for example the book Academically Adrift on how ineffective current college teaching practices are. I currently work at a predominantly engineering school, and faculty don't even have access to most educational and psychological research journals because of the high costs. Think also of the thousands of K-12 teachers - none of whom have any access to most educational research. Imagine if doctors had no access to research, and that's what the practice of education has become.
If this is successful it would be one of the best things to happen to science in decades. It is ridiculous that open scientific collaboration is hindered by paywalls.
The sad fact of the matter is that it probably wouldn't affect scientific collaboration. A large fraction of scientific research is done at universities that generally have subscriptions to these journals (albeit at a relatively large price).
What's more appalling is that you[1], as the taxpayer who funded this research can't see the results. And don't let the companies that oppose the FRPAA flim-flam you: the published papers are the real results of the research, not the progress reports that get filed with the funding agencies. I'm not going to deny that journals add some value, but how much they add and whether subscriptions and one-off $40/article fees are the best way to recoup those values is something about which I'm deeply skeptical.
[1] I'm a grad student at one of those aforementioned universities. It's a hassle for me when I'm not on campus, but not impossible
Here are some thoughts that came up during a private conversation about Elsevier a few weeks ago...
The question is, why is open access publishing so expensive in many journals? From what I understand, it's because of the need to pay the technical staff (technical editors, sysadmins, etc.) - costs that in traditional publishing are paid by your library (i.e. spread out as a tax across all faculty's grant overheads+taxpayer money). These costs can be driven down by consolidating the journal publishing platforms (i.e. providing a service for people to organize their own journals and a market for technical editors to provide their services to the content editors).
And critically, there needs to be a way to incentivize authors to drive down the total cost of publishing. A big part of the reason big old publishers continue to exist now is that there is an open loop in the incentives: the authors don't bear the costs that they incur to the universities, and there is no direct feedback from the audience that is shut out by this cost. If authors are given an idea of what it really costs to read their article, and the breakdown of who bears that cost, the journals will have to compete on that total cost.
But this will not be very effective until university libraries start breaking down the cost of subscriptions to individual users. So one way to approach this is by providing university libraries with a system to estimate the individual cost of each article view (i.e. crudely, if a subscription costs X and Y users view Z articles, then each user will have incurred some cost that is X/Y on average). Then start discussing what to do about who carries the cost burden from the users who are outliers on top. This is the first step toward closing the incentives loop.
I agree that there are too many journals, but unfortunately there will need to be even more before the ones with the right combinations of cost and editorial structure will win out. Going back to the common platform for publishing and editorial services that I mentioned: the real kicker will come when the platform is integrated with a social network (where nodes can be organizations as well as people). In other words, once you provide an easy and trusted way for editors to write down their web of trust, display that web to others, and act based on it, you will have put online the informal web of trust (reputation) that underlies publishing. This opens really powerful possibilities.
In the meantime, traditional publishers are holding on for dear life and using increasingly desperate tactics (like buying legislation, in Elsevier's case) to hold on to their money funnel. This is holding back science by artificially restricting access to publicly funded research. (And don't get me started on the textbook business... although good things are coming to that because Apple will disrupt it from the bottom.)
I still have problems with this idea. The all-funded-research-should-be-free thing is a problematic perspective to hang on to. One could argue, that consequently everyone working in Academia should be obliged to give away the books they write, the documents they provide, the presentations, the exams - for free because over here Universities are funded by taxpayer money. Enforcing this would most likely have an adverse effect, i.e. departments trying to get private funding in order to avoid disclosure.
in regards to the Journals it comes all down to the rankings. So far I did not find a single ranking were Open Access journals were performing well. Might be more of a soft sciences problem, but I can not see a reasonable motive why someone should publish in an open access journal if they research holds up to the standards of well ranked "closed" journal.
The only aspect could see is "to take a stand", and at least on my list of things I am willing to stand up for, the budgeting of the library department is relatively low on priority.
noun: "coercion or compulsion, esp. with the use or threat of violence"
They are not using force. If they did it'd be awful. But because they are doing this peacefully, with no force, it's good.
Making a free, voluntary choice a trade or contract -- whether to accept or to decline -- is the epitome of not using force.
Not using any force is one of the things that makes them legitimate. They should emphasize that instead of talking about it in terms like, "But the fight for open access is just getting started."
It's not a fight. Don't pretend you're fighting, that just makes you look bad. Especially when you aren't even fighting! Don't use metaphor to make your side look worse.
Have you ever worked in a research lab? Then you would know jut how essential it is to have access to the originals studies and prior work. Scientific research cannot be done without access to the scientific literature.
These journal companies are charging Universities millions of dollars annually. And when I say millions annually, they charge each and every separate University library millions of dollars. Yet, all these companies do is host a few hundred thousand PDF documents. I could do that for a about a hundred dollars a year on Dreamhost.
The journal companies essentially have a monopoly on the market. They must and should be broken up for the good of scientific research. The studies were funded by the public, and should be accessible to the public.
> The journal companies essentially have a monopoly on the market. They must and should be broken up for the good of scientific research. The studies were funded by the public, and should be accessible to the public.
The problem is that almost by definition, they have a monopoly on "the market", since each paper is unique and non-fungible, and therefore arguably a separate market. A university can't decide not to subscribe to Cell, for example, and instead get the same research from other journals. This is a good thing (since it means research effort isn't being duplicated), but it means you can't just "break up" a publisher to bring pricing in line with a competitive market.
What I find utterly dumbfounding is how some of the journals get away with charging everyone money. First, the journals charge the labs publishing fees. Then, the journals turn around and charge the Universities access fees. It is sheer lunacy.
I wish the NIH or NSF would require that all published studies from their grants be placed in the public domain.
I talked about force. I think you disagree with me but you don't say so directly.
Who are you saying is or isn't using force? What did I say that you disagree with?
Did you get the wrong idea that I was defending the journal companies? So your angry emotions got the better of you? I didn't defend them. I said the researchers are even better than the article suggests. As far as I can tell that puts us on the same side, yet you're pissed off and ranting at me.
Or maybe your comment was just an instance not very useful (and downright wrong) nitpicking.
Arguing that a large-scale, organized boycott does not constitute "coercion or compulsion" or that anything that does not involve physical violence should not be called a "fight" is just inane.
What makes me angry about it, is that it is such an unnecessary problem. It is just such a bad instance of the tragedy of the commons. Everyone recognizes what a bad situation it is, but no one feels they are in the position to do something about it.
Imagine the top 100 universities in the world, or even just the Ivory League, sat together and signed an agreement, that they would prohibit their staff to publish in non-free journals and that they would stop subscribing to them. I think this problem would sort itself out instantly. Same thing if the funding agencies of the EU and US would sit together.
Anyway, it seems like finally something happening about it, which is great.