Date: Wed, 07 May 2014 20:04:42 -0400
From: mark <whitroth at 5-cent.us>
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Subject: [WSFA] The Exploitative Economics of Academic Publishing
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

Excerpt:
Taxpayers in the United States spend $139 billion a year on scientific
research, yet much of this research is inaccessible not only to the
public, but also to other scientists.(a) This is the consequence of an
exploitative scientific journal system that rewards academic publishers
while punishing taxpayers, scientists, and universities. Fortunately,
cheap open-access alternatives are not only possible, but already
beginning to take root, suggesting a way forward to a more open and
equitable system for sharing research.

Like many scientists, I provide access to my research papers on my
website. I view this as a commonsense way to disseminate knowledge, but
not everyone shares this view. A few months ago, I received an email from
an official at Princeton University, where I attended graduate school,
informing me that a lawyer representing the publishing giant Elsevier had
demanded the removal of these papers from my website.(b) When I published
these papers in Elsevier journals, I was required to hand over the
copyrights. Therefore, I had no choice but to remove the papers.

The vast majority of academic papers are published by corporations like
Elsevier, and these corporations are thriving: In 2011, Elsevier made $1.1
billion in profit, at a profit margin of 36% (by comparison, Apple\342\200\231s 2012
profit margin was 35%). This impressive profitability is due in large part
to the fact that the content sold by Elsevier is produced, reviewed, and
edited on a volunteer basis by academics like me. We consent to this
system because our careers depend on publishing in prestigious journals,
almost all of which are owned by Elsevier and a small number of other
publishers.
<...>
The \342\200\234free\342\200\235 labor upon which publishers base their business model is not
really free: most academic research is funded by the federal government.
However, the taxpayers who are effectively bankrolling the publishers have
no access to most of the published content, which sits behind paywalls.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), recognizing this problem,
mandated a public access policy in 2005, according to which digital copies
of all NIH-funded research papers must be deposited in a freely accessible
online database known as PubMed Central.(d) PubMed Central costs taxpayers
$4.5 million annually, part of the more than $30 million a year in NIH
funding that goes toward page charges, submission fees, and other
subsidies to publishers. The program also only covers a relatively small
proportion of published research: 70,000 full-text articles are deposited
into PubMed Central annually, compared to 250,000 articles published each
year by Elsevier alone.(e)
--- end excerpt ---

<http://betaboston.com/footnote/2014/05/06/the-exploitative-economics-of-academic-publishing/>

          mark