Bec ColvinThis is absolutely massive news
#OpenAccess
#OpenAccess
Anathema Device@bec_colvin *author* fees?
You mean, you sign over your copyright AND you have to pay for the privilege?
Screw that :(
@anathema_device 😂 The academic publishing business model is ridiculous!
Under normal circumstances, in many journals authors can publish for free, but then readers have to pay to access the articles (a 'paywall'), or access via a subscription paid by an institution like a library.
Alternatively, to increase open access to knowledge, authors could pay a publishing fee (separate to the peer review process) that would remove the paywall so readers could freely access the papers.
Both approaches ensure the corporate publishes profit greatly from the institution of peer review and knowledge creation...
Under this new agreement, neither authors nor readers will have to pay. Big win!
Björn BrembsOh, you mean a big win for the cororate parasites who are now being given even more money and their already anemic smaller counterparts even less? Looks like governmental (as in public institutions) enforcement of monopoly power? Some corporate lobbyist must have been really successful and is now laughing all the way to the bank...
@brembs @anathema_device I don’t quite follow your comment but would like to understand - where’s the more money bit? Is there a separate exchange happening to fund the OA agreement?
The more money bit comes from our experience here in Germany with analogous agreements which shows that prices rise dramatically on the back of smaller publishers, as there is less money left for them, e.g.:
More generally, access itself hasn't really been a problem for about a decade now:
http://bjoern.brembs.net/2016/12/so-your-institute-went-cold-turkey-on-publisher-x-what-now/
This means that from the perspective of researchers (making up the bulk of readers) one can discount any progress in access as marginal. So it makes no sense to dump huge sums of money into something that tries to improve on something that can oinly be marginally improved.
So your institute went cold turkey on publisher X. What now?
With the start of the new year 2017, about 60 universities and other research institutions in Germany are set to lose subscription access to one of the main STEM publishers, Elsevier. The reason being negotiations of the DEAL consortium (600 […] <a class="more-link" href="http://bjoern.brembs.net/2016/12/so-your-institute-went-cold-turkey-on-publisher-x-what-now/">↓ Read the rest of this entry...</a>
From that perspective, if one looks at the current infrastructure for researchers, these kinds of deals are actually making everything worse, not better:
http://bjoern.brembs.net/2018/04/why-open-access-big-deals-are-worse-than-subscriptions/
BTW, that much was already clear ages ago, before OA Big Deals were a thing:
http://bjoern.brembs.net/2016/04/how-gold-open-access-may-make-things-worse/
Why open access Big Deals are worse than subscriptions
Notwithstanding the barrage of criticisms and warnings from every corner of the scholarly community, various initiatives, mainly in the Netherlands, Finland, Germany, France and the UK, continue their efforts for a smooth transition from subscriptions to open access without any […] <a class="more-link" href="http://bjoern.brembs.net/2018/04/why-open-access-big-deals-are-worse-than-subscriptions/">↓ Read the rest of this entry...</a>
So in sum, access has not deserved any attention for at least ten years now. Instead, we have bigger fish to fry, that are equally related to journals:
http://bjoern.brembs.net/2019/10/scholarship-has-bigger-fish-to-fry-than-access/
Which is why nine experts and I have proposed how academia could tackle these much bigger, much more pressing and urgent problems:
Scholarship has bigger fish to fry than access
Around the globe, there are initiatives and organizations devoted to bring “Open Access” to the world, i.e., the public availability of scholarly research works, free of charge. However, the current debate seems to largely miss the point that human readers […] <a class="more-link" href="http://bjoern.brembs.net/2019/10/scholarship-has-bigger-fish-to-fry-than-access/">↓ Read the rest of this entry...</a>
@brembs @anathema_device fascinating! Thanks for these links, I look forward to reading