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Paywall: A Documentary About the Movement for Open-Access Science Publishing

posted by Fnord666 on Monday September 10 2018, @02:35AM   Printer-friendly

takyon writes:

Documentary puts lens on the open-access movement upending scientific publishing

Jason Schmitt was working at Atlantic Records when the online site Napster disrupted the music industry by making copyrighted songs freely available. Now, the communications and media researcher at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York, is pushing for a similar disruption of academic publishing with Paywall, a documentary about the open-access movement that debuts today in a Washington, D.C., theater. "I don't think that it's right that for-profit publishers can make 35%–40% profit margins. The content is provided for them for free by academics," Schmitt, who produced the film, says.

The documentary explores the impact of Sci-Hub, a website that provides pirated versions of paywalled papers for free online, and interviews academics and publishing figures. Schmitt says many large publishers refused to go on camera—although representatives from Science and Nature did—and he is not impressed that several have begun publishing some open-access journals. "Elsevier is as much to open access as McDonald's fast food is to healthy," he says.

Sci-Hub and Library Genesis.

Related:

The Research Pirates of the Dark Web
Wellcome Trust Recommends Free Scientific Journals
Sci-Hub, the Repository of "Infringing" Academic Papers Now Available Via "Telegram"
Research Libraries Announce Boycott of Elsevier Journals Over Open Access
Elsevier Wants $15 Million Piracy Damages from Sci-Hub and Libgen
US Court Grants Elsevier Millions in Damages From Sci-Hub
Sci-Hub Faces $4.8 Million Piracy Damages and ISP Blocking
Virginia District Court Demands that ISPs and Search Engines Block Sci-Hub
Sci-Hub Bounces from TLD to TLD
Sci-Hub Proves That Piracy Can be Dangerously Useful
Plan S: Radical Open-Access Science Initiative in Europe

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Fluffeh on Monday September 10 2018, @03:41AM (1 child)

    by Fluffeh (954) Subscriber Badge on Monday September 10 2018, @03:41AM (#732649) Journal

    Get your own fucking town names, thieves.

    It's also in a bunch of other places like Papua New Guinea, South Africa and a few other places in the US like Florida.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potsdam_(disambiguation) [wikipedia.org]

    +1 informative. -1 Off-Topic (with total voting weighing towards Informative)

    *sips coffee*

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  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday September 10 2018, @04:05AM

    by FatPhil (863) <{pc-soylent} {at} {asdf.fi}> on Monday September 10 2018, @04:05AM (#732653) Homepage
    It's subtle, but it is about a form of "intellectual property", and thus more on topic than one might first think. Town names too have been monetised, so it's even more on-topic than I initially intended.
    --
    Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves