"Everyone claims to agree that people should be encouraged to understand science and other academic research. Without current knowledge, we cannot make coherent democratic decisions. But the publishers have slapped a padlock and a Keep Out sign on the gates.
You might resent Murdoch’s paywall policy, in which he charges £1 for 24 hours of access to the Times and Sunday Times. But at least in that period you can read and download as many articles as you like. Reading a single article published by one of Elsevier’s journals will cost you $31.50"
Monbiot goes on:
"Of course, you could go into the library (if it still exists). But they too have been hit by cosmic fees. The average cost of an annual subscription to a chemistry journal is $3,792(5). Some journals cost $10,000 a year or more to stock. The most expensive I’ve seen, Elsevier’s Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, is $20,930(6). Though academic libraries have been frantically cutting subscriptions to make ends meet, journals now consume 65% of their budgets(7), which means they have had to reduce the number of books they buy. Journal fees account for a significant component of universities’ costs, which are being passed to their students.
Murdoch pays his journalists and editors, and his companies generate much of the content they use. But the academic publishers get their articles, their peer reviewing (vetting by other researchers) and even much of their editing for free. The material they publish was commissioned and funded not by them but by us, through government research grants and academic stipends. But to see it, we must pay again, and through the nose.
The returns are astronomical: in the past financial year, for example, Elsevier’s operating-profit margin was 36% (£724m on revenues of £2 billion)(8). They result from a stranglehold on the market. Elsevier, Springer and Wiley, who have bought up many of their competitors, now publish 42% of journal articles(9)."
What I wonder is how much this cost is really being transmitted to students? Is this actually a factor in driving up tuition costs? My guess is no, as from what I understand college tuition prices are mostly speaking to people's desire for luxury items - by increasing the price tag, your college becomes more desirable to attend. Extra funds go to endless building projects, fancy gyms, and the like. (Unfortunately, this means some students will be pampered for four years but then be faced with crippling loans.) In short, I don't think the academic publishers are to blame for this issue.
The greater crime to me seems to be putting publicly-funded research behind a paywall. I wouldn't say that the academic publishers are "evil," more that they are taking advantage of the economics. They certainly share part of the blame for making the research out of reach, but no one is keeping them from doing so.
Some open-access journals and websites are expanding. Scientist could choose to take action and only publish their work in these, perhaps inspiring others to leave the publishers. This would eventually increase the prestige of the open journals, create demand for new ones, and weaken the publishers' grips. But currently in the natural sciences, there are several thousand journals compared to the paltry handful of open sites. Unfortunately, most scientists simply have to publish in the journals for sheer mathematical reasons. It seems a top-down solution is needed, since the economic drivers are not there yet. How about publicly-funded journals to complement the publicly-funded research?
No comments:
Post a Comment