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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.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 15 2016, @12:34AM
Mind you, RTFA is a no-no if you want to avoid the risk of posting something relevant.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Tuesday March 15 2016, @11:11PM
NYT is paywalled. I wouldn't give those bums a penny.
But just from the summary the stupid shines out. Just take their facts at face value and it makes no sense. The journals make 30% profit. Oh the horror, they almost make Apple level profit margins! Burn them at the stake!
Now lets really get to the heart of it. Assume they cut their prices in half, operating as a non-profit AND cutting costs without impacting quality. Like I said, ASSUME it for purposes of debate. Raise your hand if you think more than 1% of the people currently going on all butthurt about this would suddenly say "Oh, that is now a reasonable price." and shut up. Now raise your hand if you think these thieves would continue trying to convince themselves they are the good guys until the price was zero. Ok, so shut up about the prices because that distraction isn't fooling anyone.
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Wednesday March 16 2016, @06:39AM
It's not about getting "stuff for free" or not. It's about how researchers can communicate with each other. Every year the publishers have been more of an impediment, and the problem has been growing for decades.
You've missed the point and assume the wrong thieves. The journals provide almost no value added, maybe a little branding and the distribution but that's about it. The distribution is easy in the digital age and any one else could do it instead. The branding comes more or less automatically as a consequence from the selection of content. The actual research, analysis, review and (usually) editing are all paid for by others not the journal. The journal just comes in and takes the work that has been provided them and puts a very high price tag on it. In other words, the researchers are in a situation of having to buy back their own work which they've already paid dearly for.
By price gouging on the essential titles, the journal publishers are becoming bottlenecks in what is supposed to be scholarly communication across distance and time. They're preventing rather than facilitating communication. The whole point of a researcher publishing is to get the word out to their peers. When fewer and fewer institutions can afford the titles, fewer peers have access. It looks like a model designed to implode eventually anyway.
There is a lot written up on Open Access, here's one in French Un guide de l'Open Access à destination du grand public [actualitte.com] , which translates quite well with an automated translator to A Guide to Open Access for the general public [google.com]. The NYT opinion piece only covers one aspect. The paywall must be selective because I have not seen it for so long I thought it was gone, I would not have linked to a paywalled site.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.