the gipster: Academic paywalls mean publish and perish Academic publishing is structured on exclusivity, and to read them people must shell out an average of $19 per article.

abernard102@gmail.com 2013-12-26

Summary:

"On July 19, 2011, Aaron Swartz, a computer programmer and activist, was arrested for downloading 4.8 million academic articles. The articles constituted nearly the entire catalogue of JSTOR, a scholarly research database. Universities that want to use JSTOR are charged as much as $50,000 in annual subscription fees. Individuals who want to use JSTOR must shell out an average of $19 per article. The academics who write the articles are not paid for their work, nor are the academics who review it. The only people who profit are the 211 employees of JSTOR. Swartz thought this was wrong. The paywall, he argued, constituted "private theft of public culture". It hurt not only the greater public, but also academics who must "pay money to read the work of their colleagues". For attempting to make scholarship accessible to people who cannot afford it, Swartz is facing a $1 million fine and up to 35 years in prison. The severity of the charges shocked activists fighting for open access publication. But it shocked academics too, for different reasons. 'Can you imagine if JSTOR was public?' one of my friends in academia wondered. 'That means someone might actually read my article.' Academic publishing is structured on exclusivity. Originally, this exclusivity had to do with competition within journals. Acceptance rates at top journals are low, in some disciplines under 5 per cent, and publishing in prestigious venues was once an indication of one’s value as a scholar.  Today, it all but ensures that your writing will go unread. 'The more difficult it is to get an article into a journal, the higher the perceived value of having done so,' notes Katheen Fitzpatrick, the Director of Scholarly Communication at the Modern Language Association. 'But this sense of prestige too easily shades over into a sense that the more exclusively a publication is distributed, the higher its value.' Discussions of open access publishing have centred on whether research should be made free to the public. But this question sets up a false dichotomy between 'the public' and 'the scholar'. Many people fall into a grey zone, the boundaries of which are determined by institutional affiliation and personal wealth. This category includes independent scholars, journalists, public officials, writers, scientists and others who are experts in their fields yet are unwilling or unable to pay for academic work. This denial of resources is a loss to those who value scholarly inquiry. But it is also a loss for the academics themselves, whose ability to stay employed rests on their willingness to limit the circulation of knowledge. In academia, the ability to prohibit scholarship is considered more meaningful than the ability to produce it ..."

Link:

http://thegipster.blogspot.com/2013/12/academic-paywalls-mean-publish-and.html

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.business_models oa.publishers oa.comment oa.advocacy oa.impact oa.prestige oa.jstor oa.guerrilla

Date tagged:

12/26/2013, 13:19

Date published:

12/26/2013, 08:19