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New York Times Opinion Piece on Open Access Publishing

posted by CoolHand on Monday March 14 2016, @11:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the rip-it-open dept.

canopic jug writes:

The New York Times has an opinion piece about Open Access publishing. It starts with the case of Alexandra Elbakyan a guerilla open access activist who is on the lam from the US government acting on behalf of the copyright cartel. Pricing and other restrictions put many journals out of reach of all but the few researchers at major, well-funded universities in developed nations. The large publishing companies usually have profit margins over 30% and subscription prices have been rising twice as fast as the price of health care, which itself is priced insanely, over the past two decades, so there appears to be a real scandal there. Several options are available including pre-print repositories and various open access journals. The latter require the author to pay up front for publishing. However, the real onus lies on the communities' leaders, like heads of institutions and presidents of universities, who are in a position to change which journals are perceived as high-impact.

Edit: Alexandra Elbakyan founded Sci-Hub in 2011.

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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 15 2016, @02:54AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 15 2016, @02:54AM (#318333) Journal

    Now, I'm asking you to use your imagination here.

    Sorry, I don't have any, all I have it's a straight face.

    Suppose the competition came not from public web sites, but from pirate sites illegally giving away the stuff that you produced and curated.

    You mean... like Google? I seem to remember some attempts to extract a potential income from Google, the judges recently have said "Naah, mate" [reuters.com]. Pretty unimaginative folks, those judges.

    A Berlin court rejected on Friday a legal complaint filed by German publishers which said Google was abusing its market power by refusing to pay them for displaying newspaper articles online.

    --

    That could still pack a big financial punch, couldn't it?

    And this is related with costs exactly how?
    Ah, are you backpedalling on the unfortunate choice of words, and you agree we are discussing about potential (but unrealized) income?
    Then I'll ask you to categorically demonstrate (with as straight a face as mine), that you are entitled to realize that income you pretend you lost, in other words that every pirated download is a loss - you simply just don't believe you on your word, don't come to me with "because I say so".

    What is the benefit for other members of the society that you bring in? Especially how the researchers that produced the articles and the citizens which paid for a great deal of them (grant from budgets) are benefiting?

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
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