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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
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday September 10 2018, @02:59AM (4 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Informative) by Fluffeh on Monday September 10 2018, @03:41AM (1 child)
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*
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday September 10 2018, @04:05AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday September 10 2018, @10:30PM (1 child)
Copying is not theft.
Even though you were joking, please quit playing into the hands of the intellectual property propagandists.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday September 11 2018, @08:56PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Fluffeh on Monday September 10 2018, @03:49AM (1 child)
I'm perfectly happy with publications like these making a huge markup on work they are getting for free. You should never shit on other people's fortune. Where I very much disagree however, is that they are so big that they can introduce draconian rules about what you can/can't do if you submit to them - mainly exclusivity.
So much research work is partly or completely funded by government funds that it seems totally obscene that it isn't ALSO published in free journals. I want all researchers to have access to work that I am (indirectly through taxes) funding. I know a lot of researchers also feel this way, but are bound by needing to publish in a well respected journal to get the prestige for their research it deserves.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday September 10 2018, @11:04PM
> You should never shit on other people's fortune.
Reality is raining on their parade. If anything, we're propping them up, helping them deny reality. That most certainly should stop.
However, they've been pretty skillful at manipulating the public into buying their nonsense, playing on people's fear of loss. They dangle in front of everyone the possibility that you too might become a famous author and strike it rich-- if, that is, copyright is still strong.
Where they really screwed up was the terrorism campaign, accusing half the world of piracy, calling us all thieves, threatening to sue. Such debacles as SCO Unix trying to shake down every Linux user for a license, for only $699, patent trolls and then these so-called rights holder organizations suing over works that they don't actually own, and the MAFIAA trying to turn ISPs and colleges into intellectual property police-- all that massive overreaching ultimately served to show only that they are unreasonable, and seem utterly clueless about that. Big Pharma and Monsanto also trying to catch this wave only makes it worse for them. Academic publishers such as Elsevier are really bit players in this, but the extreme unreasonableness of their parasitism is getting them a lot of bad press.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by opinionated_science on Monday September 10 2018, @10:28AM (1 child)
As someone who has published and reviewed too many things to care.
1) Educational material should be *free*. Tuition, however might cost you.
2) All materials funded by $GOVT should be publicly available immediately (e.g arxiv).
3) Publication should be peer reviewed using the online mechanisms. You can have an anonymous or a validated id, but only contributors can comment for cause. e.g. you might anonymously publish a paper on "the mathematics of nightingale song", but everyone will only use that as a basis for your review. This will not stop trolling, but they'll need to get tenure first.
4) Academic credit should be decoupled from publications. If you are teaching students, that's your job. If you are doing research , the product is part of the result, and you publish that - but please folks stop stringing it out.
It has become simply impossible to ignore that lack of quality that is awash in the media, and academic quotas form much of the bilge. Good stuff takes 4-5 years, publish or perish causes this bizarre diffusion of information.
Put simply. Those that can do. Those that can't, can teach. Those who can only talk about it, enter politics.
(Score: 1) by redneckmother on Monday September 10 2018, @05:55PM
judging from the majority of US politicians, they cant even talk about it (coherently).
Mas cerveza por favor.