lazy consensus

"And then we’ve got Fight Club Soap — the scholarly publishing situation we’re all so familiar with — in which universities pay for the research and writing of scholarly articles, and for the time of their faculty to peer review and edit them, only to turn right back around and purchase the products of that labor back from publishers at an exorbitant mark-up and in unbreakable bundles. (I’m heartened to say that the tide is beginning to turn on this, with researcher boycotts and a shift from librarians calling foul to faculty doing so. The emphasis on Elsevier alone at this point is probably unjust, even if hugely symbolic, but my feeling is that we see in the current grassroots boycott a case where the crucial constituency, who have previously been silent and therefore assumed to give lazy consent, are finally speaking up. And just in the nick of time, because the Research Works Act is on its way. (Note: at the time of the publication of this transcript – "Ding, dong, the witch is dead!" – at least temporarily.) ..."