Overpriced Scholarship: An Exchange by Robert A. Schneider | The New York Review of Books

"There is no more persuasive or eloquent advocate for digital scholarship than Robert Darnton, as he once again demonstrates in his recent essay ['A World Digital Library Is Coming True!,' NYR, May 22]. The Digital Public Library of America, on whose board of directors he serves, is indeed worthy of all the enthusiasm conveyed in his piece. But when it comes to open access—where journals provide their content free of charge—his advocacy fails to admit a crucial distinction, one that, I fear, only provides some open access boosters a helping hand as they blithely tar both STEM (science, technology, engineering, medicine) journals and those in the humanities with the same very broad brush. I know that Robert Darnton, one of the best historians of our time, would have no truck with those who gleefully seize upon open access, not only for its potential to relieve overburdened library budgets and make scholarship available to the public—laudable goals both—but also to dismiss traditional scholarly journals as avaricious, hopelessly antiquated entities that academia in a digital age would do well without. However, his neglect to point out the huge price differential between STEM and humanities journals unfortunately provides grist for their mill. The cost of many of the former is indeed grotesque—some on the order of $40,000 a year; and the bloated profits of their publishers certainly warrant the conclusion that something is terribly wrong in the world of academic journal publishing. But wait—that world is not the only one! Journals in the humanities, and many of the social sciences, operate upon very different principles ..."