How Academia and Publishing are Destroying Scientific Innovation: A Conversation with Sydney Brenner | King's Review – Magazine
peter.suber's bookmarks 2014-03-01
Summary:
"[Sydney Brenner:] If you send a PDF of your own paper to a friend, then you are committing an infringement. Of course they can’t police it, and many of my colleagues just slap all their papers online. I think you’re only allowed to make a few copies for your own purposes. It seems to me to be absolutely criminal. When I write for these papers, I don’t give them the copyright. I keep it myself. That’s another point of publishing, don’t sign any copyright agreement. That’s my advice. I think it’s now become such a giant operation. I think it is impossible to try to get control over it back again.
[Elizabeth Dzeng:] It does seem nearly impossible to institute change to such powerful institutions. But academics have enthusiastically coordinated to strike in support of decent wages. Why not capitalise on this collective action and target the publication industry, a root cause of these financial woes? One can draw inspiration from efforts such as that of the entire editorial board of the journal Topology, who resigned in 2006 due to pricing policies of their publisher, Elsevier.
Professor Tim Gowers, a Cambridge mathematician and recipient of the Fields medal, announced last year that he would not be submitting publications to, nor peer reviewing for Elsevier, which publishes some of the worlds top journals in an array of fields. Thousands of other researchers have followed suit, pledging that they would not support Elsevier via an online initiative, the Cost of Knowledge. This “Academic Spring”, is gathering force, with open access publishing as its flagship call...."