British Government suddenly recovers sanity

The government is to unveil controversial plans to make publicly funded scientific research immediately available for anyone to read for free by 2014, in the most radical shakeup of academic publishing since the invention of the internet.

Under the scheme, research papers that describe work paid for by the British taxpayer will be free online for universities, companies and individuals to use for any purpose, wherever they are in the world.

In an interview with the Guardian before Monday’s announcement David Willetts , the universities and science minister, said he expected a full transformation to the open approach over the next two years.

The move reflects a groundswell of support for “open access” publishing among academics  who have long protested that journal publishers make large profits by locking research  behind online paywalls. “If the taxpayer has paid for this research to happen, that work shouldn’t be put behind a paywall before a British citizen can read it,” Willetts said.

“This will take time to build up, but within a couple of years we should see this fully feeding through.”

more 

Harvard bit by JSnake

We write to communicate an untenable situation facing the Harvard Library. Many large journal publishers have made the scholarly communication environment fiscally unsustainable and academically restrictive. This situation is exacerbated by efforts of certain publishers (called “providers”) to acquire, bundle, and increase the pricing on journals.  Harvard Faculty Advisory Council

Human research in the JSTOR dungeon

Step back and think about this picture. Universities that created this academic content for free must pay to read it. Step back even further. The public -- which has indirectly funded this research with federal and state taxes that support our higher education system -- has virtually no access to this material, since neighborhood libraries cannot afford to pay those subscription costs. Newspapers and think tanks, which could help extend research into the public sphere, are denied free access to the material. Faculty members are rightly bitter that their years of work reaches an audience of a handful, while every year, 150 million attempts to read JSTOR content are denied every year.

Laura McKenna on:

Locked in the Ivory Tower: Why JSTOR Imprisons Academic Research

More JSTOR jokerama

Re JSTOR cartel, fake scarcity, bullshit economy, etc.:

via techdirt:

Academic Publishing Profits Enough To Fund Open Access To Every Research Article In Every Field

from the let's-just-do-it dept

The arguments against open access have moved on from the initial "it'll never work" to the "maybe it'll work, but it's not sustainable" stage. That raises a valid point, of course: who will pay for journals that make their content freely available online?

There are many open access business models that are being tried, and one of the most obvious ones is to charge authors a publication fee – in fact, many traditional academic journals do that as well as making readers pay a subscription fee. In practise, the fee is usually paid by the author's funding institution as part of their overall support for research.

A per-article publication fee is the approach adopted by one of the leading open access publishers, Public Library of Science (PLoS). Its announcement earlier this year that revenue now covers its operating costs is an important data point in establishing the viability of the open access approach.

Meanwhile, on the traditional publishing side, Heather Morrison has been analysing the profits of the major academic publisher Elsevier (disclosure: I worked in one of Reed-Elsevier's divisions a few decades ago) on her splendidly-named blog "The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics":

If the total profit from Elsevier and Lexis-Nexis is added together and converted to U.S. dollars, the total is $2,075m. Divided by the estimated worldwide scholarly article output of 1.5 million articles per year (Björk et al, 2008), this comes out to $1,383 U.S.

That figure is very close to the $1350 article fee charged by PLoS for its biggest title, PLoS ONE, which means:

the profits of this one company alone could fund a global, fully open access scholarly publishing system, at a rate of $1,383 U.S. per article.

A comment on a post on another blog with a fantastic name - "Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week" (what is it about open access advocates and their blogs?) - pointed out that this calculation was incorrect, and that the actual figure was more like $730 per article. But adding in the profits of another major academic publisher, Springer, would bring the overall profit per article published back up to the PLoS ONE level.

But those are just details; what really matters is the fact that collectively the top two or maybe three publishers take out of the academic world enough profits to pay for every research article in every discipline to be made freely available online for everyone to access using PLoS's publishing fee approach.

As Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week's Mike Taylor explains, that would mean:

Dentists would be able to keep up with the relevant literature. Small businesseswould be able to make plans with full information. The Climate Code Foundationwould have a sounder and more up-to-date scientific basis for its work. Patient groups would be able to understand their diseases and give informed consent for treatment. Medical charities, amateur palaeontologists, ornithologists and so many more would have access to the information they need. Researchers in third-world countries could have the information they need to cope with life-threatening issues of health, food and water.

We can have all that for our $2.075 billion per year. Or we can keep giving it to Elsevier’s [+Springer's] shareholders. Giving it, remember: not buying something with it. Don’t forget, this is not the money that Elsevier absorbs as its costs: salaries, rent, connectivity, what have you. This is their profit. It’s pure profit. This is the money that is taken out of the system.

So, yes, open access is cheaper. Stupidly cheaper. Absurdly, ridiculously, appallingly cheaper.

It's an intriguing thought: to provide global access to all current academic research we just need to flip from one system – the present one, where a few giant corporations make billions of dollars a year – to one where open access publishers break even, and where academic institutions save money. So what are we waiting for?

Feel free to post this article in full anywhere you please...

When, Lord...

Academic publishers make Murdoch look like a socialist

So when does academic publishing get disrupted?

Update:

Academic publishers run a guarded knowledge economy

Paywalling Pays

Who knew Times' readers had it in 'em! The comments on the NYT's dull article about Aaron Swartz's liberties being stolen by JSTOR are fun!

Especially this one:

26.

Bill Harbaugh

Eugene, Oregon

July 19th, 2011

4:11 pm

Go to the IRS 990 for JSTOR,http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2009/133/857/2009-133857105-06a328... It's a "non-profit" dba "ITHAKA HARBORS".

I count 8 employees with compensation over $250,000. They put academic research behind a paid firewall, so they can bring in the money for these salaries.

Who is the criminal here?

The president of JSTOR, Mr. Kevin M. Guthrie, has a combined compensation of upwards of $420,000.

Aaron Swartz, JSTOR Misfit

Once upon a tome, Aaron Swartz saw an "open library"

JSTOR dreams it has a closed garden.

Into it crept an allegedly feral fellow.

To "steal" its golden apples.

Some apples!

The apples which are still there.

JUSTICE dreams

Petition here

Cost-per-action in San Marino

SCEPSI - European School of Social Imagination
Conference 20-22 May 2011, Republic of San Marino

PRELIMINARY PROGRAM:
PRACTICAL INFORMATION:

Reinventing the autonomy of knowledge is the task of our time. It’s not only a political task. The epistemic foundation of research and learning as autonomous activities is at stake, when dogmas of profit, growth, competition take the lead in the old institutions of production and transmission of knowledge. This is why we are calling students and researchers, artists and scientists and social activists to gather in the first conference of SCEPSI that will take place in San Marino, on 20-22 May 2011.

Protests against the financial aggression and the destruction of the
public school in the European continent are spreading, but we have to
create new institutions, aimed to self organization of cognitive workers
and to the reactivation of social sensibility and imagination. The
conference will be the first act of the activity of the European School of
Social Imagination, that in the next year will organize seminars in San
Marino, and in European cities like Helsinki, London, and Oslo.

The activity of the School starts from four question[s]: 1. How can we think
the consequences to every day life in the face of a possible economic
failure of the European Union? 2. How can art and poetry arouse new
energies and revitalize the social field weakened by precarization and the
alienation of (digital) labour? 3.How can emergent scientific imagination
reconstitute the social body? 4. How can we open up spaces for the
autonomy of knowledge within the process of the marketisation and
capitalisation of the education system?

These questions will be foundational for the emergent curriculum of the first year of seminars and engagements of the European School of Social Imagination. The following is the program of the conference, that may change slightly during the next weeks.

One apparently must go to San Marino to find people talking about something worthwhile. Of course we USians gave up the autonomy of knowledge early on - was it at the time we decided that all speech should be impregnated by advertising? Or was it endemic to our method of escaping history -- making all speech, all public records, merely somebody else's marketing, to which we triumphantly suggest our counter-marketing?

If Europe is concerned for the destruction of the public school, it is now in need of referring to our history.

A Blight from JSTOR

Here's a book about Ezra Pound, pounder of the flesh of Usura, that you can purchase as a paperback for $17.86 on Amazon:

Here's an academic note on Surette's book that's little more than one page long. You can purchase it from JSTOR for $34:

Hey JSTOR: "It gnaweth the thread and the loom" -

<>

Google Award winner thinks educational content should be free

Idea: Make educational content available online for free.

Project funded: The Khan Academy is a non-profit educational organization that provides high-quality, free education to anyone, anywhere via an online library of more than 1,600 teaching videos. We are providing $2 million to support the creation of more courses and to enable the Khan Academy to translate their core library into the world’s most widely spoken languages.


How UnJSTOR can u get.

News from JSTOR

JSTOR gets current, almost, not quite yet, a bit. Is the model changing? If so, why?

USia: Mammon awaits

Via Mr. Herrell:

Opening the non-open access medical journals: Internet-based sharing of journal articles on a medical web site #

Candyass Conclusion:

Although the site covers a range of subjects, the focus is on the medical field. It has found that a large number of such articles, from a very wide range of journals, are shared. Major scientific and medical journal articles are frequently shared. There are ethical and financial issues at stake. While the solution to the problem is unclear, it is certain that the problem requires further research, and further discussion in an open access area.

To Which, Milton:

Truth and understanding are not such wares as to be monopoliz'd and traded in by tickets and statutes, and standards. We must not think to make a staple commodity of all the knowledge in the Land, to mark and licence it like our broad cloath, and our wooll packs.

The policies of academic journal publishers basically suck

As library budgets are cut nationwide due to the economic recession, it is time for universities to rethink the academic publishing model. The answer lies in open-access journal articles.

But apparently not at Stanford.

doh!

Taxpayers should have access to knowledge they enable:

The Federal Research Public Access Act would be a major step forward in ensuring equitable online access to research literature that is paid for by taxpayers. The federal government funds over $60 billion in research annually. Research supported by the National Institutes of Health, which accounts for approximately one-third of federally funded research, produces an estimated 80,000 peer-reviewed journal articles each year. link (pdf) via Taxpayer @ccess

Compliments of the public good

via Gracchi

There is a worrying trend in which the resources that you can use to do proper scholarship are falling behind subscription curtains - JSTOR, EEBO, the RHS bibliography- are all beyond access for members of the general public to inspect. I don't like this because I think scholarship should be open to access to everyone and I also think that if it isn't there are risks - there are risks to making access to knowledge conditional on holding an institutional subscription (step forward JSTOR) - I understand that there has to be an economic model to support such things - but on the other hand there is a complementary public good, that access to knowledge ought to be free.

Whether you call them academics or priests, exclusive castes who dominate access to knowledge are not healthy for society and the internet ought to be about opening knowledge to everyone- not just to those with a university login.

[Added later:] A glimpse into how one academic library (Hanover College's Duggan Library) values JSTOR:

In 2008, the Duggan Library subscribed to a total of 825 (and still growing) archived titles covering almost 26 million pages of content. This represents 6, 300 linear feet of shelf space. To put that last number in perspective, just imagine all of the periodical shelving behind the reference desk/collection on the first floor.

During the year there were more than 22,000 searches performed, and more than 62,000 viewed pages, with 4,857 full text articles downloaded representing about 5 downloaded articles per student FTE. Based on the cost of our combined JSTOR subscriptions we paid the equivalent of $1.84 per article. Compare this to customary interlibrary loan article fees of $10 to $20 and it is easy to see that we are certainly getting a good return on investment while helping ensure that our users are getting the academic support they require.

Comment: More data like this could lead to a sense of what might be a fair pricing mechanism for open, worldwide micropayment access to JSTOR. It would also be helpful to know how many people attempt to access information hiding behind JSTOR's walls, who are blocked, and how many have somehow hacked in.

My guess is that when all these numbers are brought into relation, we're looking at a low, eminently affordable micropayment scheme that would bring in revenue to JSTOR and its ilk, and permit everyone to use the research which it now wrongly hoards.

Withholding knowledge is also power

via INSIDE Higher Ed:

JSTOR -- which until now has been a repository for back issues of nearly 800 journals -- will, beginning in 2011, provide current content from the 50-plus journals that the UC Press publishes, meshing the new releases seamlessly with the journals' back files and primary content from libraries increasingly found on JSTOR. ...

...libraries would buy access to both current and archival journals in a single transaction, though the pricing models would be different. Users would continue to pay for JSTOR's archival material in roughly the same way they do now, paying for collections of journals at prices set by JSTOR, but publishers will set their own prices for the current journals, which while provided through JSTOR will be clearly branded by journal and publisher.

SIGH

"The important issue here is whether or not other publishers will get on board with the UC Press," Steven J. Bell, associate university librarian for research & instructional services at Temple University, said in an e-mail message. "As they say, this agreement could be a 'game changer,' but not if the other publishers don’t buy in to the change."

"Aren't we at a point where we should be moving forward more to integrate monograph with journal content online, rather than allowing this new 'digital divide' to grow even further?" ...

[Oh yes - the digital divide.]

"It would be a natural extension of this platform to have that content. Eventually, it won't matter what the traditional carrier was -- it will be 'content,' in a variety of presentations, that represents the whole scope of the research endeavor."

JSTOR's method of digitally packaging academic knowledge seems to be maturing into a richer model. What's unclear is why the expansion of "content" is not yet matched by similar efforts to broaden audience access. Why not set as a goal the chance for anyone, anywhere to access articles for minimal micropayments? Or is that not within "the whole scope of the research endeavor." What's the down side of sharing knowledge?

Fuck the piper (an immodest proposal)

Google Inc. (GOOG 429.53, -13.07, -2.95%) on Thursday said its second-quarter net income rose to $1.48 billion, or $4.66 a share, from $1.25 billion, or $3.92 a share in the same period a year earlier. Net revenue in the period ended in June rose to $4.07 billion from $3.9 billion, Google said. Excluding special items, earnings were $5.36 a share. Wall Street analysts had expected Google to post earnings excluding special items of $5.09 a share, and $4.06 billion in net revenue, according to data from Thomson Reuters. #

I'm not understanding why everyone thinks Google is brilliant but no one seems to grok the model.

It would be edifying to know how many stories at the NY Times site have been clicked on by users (or by bots) over the past decade, if that's how long they've been available. Must be in the hundreds of millions. Let's say 300 million [add: that's way low - see here]. Had they charged $.007 per story accession (i.e., click), the Times would have made $2.1 million. That's $2.1 million more than the ZERO their content has earned for them thus far (offset by whatever grand total their short-lived scheme of charging for Rich, Dowd, etc. brought in).

But who would agree to pay them even $.007 per access? you fairly ask. And my model says - it doesn't matter. Because the money would not come directly from the end user's pocket, but rather from those funds spent by all of us to all the large corpses who bring bits into the home, by whatever means - Comcast, Verizon, etc. Because these companies right now are thieves. They are making money hand over fist from users. But users do not pay them in order to see dark screens (that bliss is for television). We pay the Comcasts and Verizons in order to access content. Their mega-earnings are contingent upon their parasitism of Content.

Does it not seem appropriate that the pipers pay for that which enables them to exist? I have put forth this model before, (also a bit here) and of course it's patently absurd. However, I assure you, it's the only fair way to make sure that there is quality content on the Net. As of now, that assurance is lacking. The black holes of internet service providers are threatening to suck down all the light. They are making vast profit while thinking only about metal and fiber and trucks. All of those who are trying at least to think, to tweet, to make something or do something or read something, sit atop an enormous pile of bupkis. This is wrong.

The only fair way is to let every click on the net - to anything, except closed sub sites (like JSTOR), and sites featuring socially challenged content (bestiality, child porn, Republican Senators) - move a bit of micromoney from piper (a general fund fed from all pipers) to contenter. And, the same amount. Equal bits. Let's not quibble over how much more quality one finds in the NY Times. You provide content, you get clicked on, you get the everybody micro$, period.

This in no way obviates Big or Small Content from selling ads or running contests or selling t-shirts. It is simply the addition of a revenue stream that wasn't there before, taken from the profits of Big Pipes. You know the gold is there.

My argument would be improved by containing actual numbers of clicks for some content providers. But I don't think it would change the underlying logic. Please now tell me why I'm wrong so I can remove this chimera from my skull.



[Update] from the Man who Knows Everything:

Free is for the masses; the elite will pay for high quality content in news, information, education and entertainment. Digital feudalism...8 minutes ago from TweetDeck

ajkeen

Andrew Keen

The L Word: JSTOR by any other name...

JSTOR and Ithaka Merge

JSTOR (www.jstor.org) and Ithaka (www.ithaka.org) have announced the merger of their organizations. The new combined enterprise will be called Ithaka and will be dedicated to helping the academic community use digital technologies to advance scholarship and teaching and to reducing systemwide costs through collective action. 

More from Ithaka here.

More logos, brands: Aluka - Portico - NITLE. 

snip:

"Increasingly we are approached for help on a range of initiatives that seek to leverage this investment...” said Guthrie.

Update via AKMA: Jo Guldi's constructive vision for Journals that take seriously what it means to disseminate.

Clouds and walls

Amazon's Cloud:

"We routinely send people monthly bills for 17 cents," Bezos said. "If you store a gigabyte of data for a month, we'll send you a bill for 15 cents."*

But you'll pay JSTOR or Projectile(vomit) MUSE $10, $15, or more for an article for dated research on some rarified academic subject...

Gavin Baker of SPARC has a podcast on changing the scholarly publishing market:

"The DOAJ is growing at a remarkable rate" - over 3,300 journals with total open access. See the DOAR.

*The 2008 annual subscription price for the journal Brain Research is $21,744.

Take the survey - they want to help

Curiously tantalizing text found next to an article I am not currently authorized to access:

Denied access to an article in JSTOR?

We want to help!

Please take this 5 minute survey to help us understand you and your needs. We would like to provide you with access to articles in the future.

Most hopeful sign yet. Take the survey. Tell them.