Publish means “make public”. Paywalls are the opposite of publishing « Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week #AcademicSpring

pontika.nancy@gmail.com's bookmarks 2012-10-17

Summary:

"Nothing is wrong with publishers making a profit. PLOS made an operating profit of 21.5% in 2011 (though they plough it back into their mission “to accelerate progress in science and medicine by leading a transformation in research communication”.) BioMed Central also makes a profit, and since they are a for-profit company they get to keep it, distribute it to shareholders, or what have you. Good on them... The issue is not publishers who make money. The issue is corporations that go by the title 'publishers', but which in fact make money by preventing publication.  Because 'publish' means 'make public'. The whole point of a publisher is to make things public.  'Publishing is not a job any more, it’s a button' giving papers to a 'publisher' that locks them behind a firewall is the opposite of publishing. It’s privating.  Yesterday we saw an appalling demonstration of why this is so important. The barrier-based textbook publisher Pearson found that in 2007 a teacher had posted a copy of the Beck Hopelessness Scale on his blog. It’s a 20-question list, intended to help prevent suicide, and totals 279 words. It was published in 1974, and Pearson holds the copyright,selling copies  for $120 – $6 per question, or 43¢ per word.  So naturally Pearson saw their profits being eaten into by the free availability of the Beck Scale. Naturally, rather than contacting the blog author, or the network that it’s part of, they sent a DMCA takedown notice to ServerBeach, who host the web server that the blog was on. And naturally ServerBeach shut down the entire site twelve hours later.  This site, Edublogs, is home to 1,451,943 teacher and student blogs. Yes, you read that right. One and a half million blogs.  The reason Pearson issued a DMCA takedown is because they make their money by preventing access. It’s the nature of the beast. If your business model is to prevent people from making things public, then this kind of thing is inevitable. Whereas it is literally impossible for PLOS or BMC ever to perpetrate this kind of idiocy because their business model is to make things public. When someone else takes a thing that they have made public and makes it more public, then great! No-one has to issue any DMCA takedowns!  And this is why there is a fundamental, unbridgeable divide between open-access publishers and barrier-based publishers..."

Link:

http://svpow.com/2012/10/16/publish-means-make-public-paywalls-are-the-opposite-of-publishing/

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » pontika.nancy@gmail.com's bookmarks
Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.gold oa.publishers oa.plos oa.dmca oa.business_models oa.profits oa.bmc oa.pearson oa.edublogs oa.summerbeach oa.journals

Date tagged:

10/17/2012, 04:57

Date published:

10/17/2012, 09:35