Re: <nettime> some more nuanced thoughts on SWARTZ

[Rama Hoetzlein <rch@umail.ucsb.edu>]

There is existing research on this:

Crisis in Scholarly 
Publishing:http://stanford.edu/~boyd/papers/html/schol_pub_crisis.html 
<http://stanford.edu/%7Eboyd/papers/html/schol_pub_crisis.html>

The Future of Publication: 
http://www.mla.org/resources/documents/issues_scholarly_pub/repview_future_pub

See also (Crisis section): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_publishing

Subscription rates are extremely high, and increasing, for high profile 
journals - which are mostly paid by libraries. The proceeds generally do 
not return to the author, they go entirely to the publisher. So the 
question is: How much should go to publisher versus author?
     Paid by library = Paid to author + Publisher overhead
Is the university library paying for content or for access?

Ultimately, the capitalist model is exists, but it is at the 
publisher-library level. The readers, generally members of a university 
with library access, usually pay nothing. The writer, also a member of 
university with affiliation needed to publish, also pays and is paid 
nothing for publishing. So both individual readers and writers are 
pay/paid nothing - which I think is good, except that it excludes people 
outside the university model.

Looking at the publisher-library level, the publishers are definitely 
making it harder for libraries. Library budgets are being greatly cut, 
but publishers continue to raise prices.
The end result is that fewer libraries participate in high profile 
journals, which result in a more elite top-tier of researchers.

Basically, the capitalist model does exist, but is more deeply hidden. 
It relates to which university you go to, how much access you have as a 
researcher, and which journals you are free to publish in. This goes 
back to how much you paid for your education to enter the academic system.
The end result of the publisher-library crisis is to further increase 
the separation between well-educated (wealthy) or high profile 
researchers and average ones. A good effect is that it keeps the less 
serious, non-hardworking ones out, while a bad effect is that it 
dissuades hardworking, talented, but disadvantaged individuals.

Rama Hoetzlein

On 7/26/2011 7:34 AM, Keith Sanborn wrote:

>It's actually worse than that: academic journals in my limited experience 
>refuse to pay any rights for images and the writer of an article (at least 
>in the USSA) using images has to submit proof that s/he has secured 
>copyright permission for reproducing them, which means s/he has to pay for 
>them or try to persuade the maker/owner of the image to yield rights of 
>reproduction to the journal in my experience on absurd terms. Your mileage 
>may vary.
>
>I wd love to know if there is any general research on the economics of 
>academic journals--print or electronic.
 <...>


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