An article in the Guardian yesterday:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/academic-publishers-murdoch-socialist
brings up the profit margins of academic publishers. I found one line particularly interesting:
This is a tax on education, a stifling of the public mind. It appears to contravene the universal declaration of human rights, which says that “everyone has the right freely to … share in scientific advancement and its benefits”.
The article also mentions that the research itself is often paid for by the public. So, assuming we do not wish to continue to be stifled, what would we lose by publishing our findings in an alternative medium – openly on the internet, for example?
Perhaps a measure of quality, a stamp of approval. Peer review, for example, is an important and not insignificant task; however, there is no reason why service providers could not provide peer review services separately from publishing, if necessary. (A mechanical turk of peer review is not beyond the imagination, either…)
Whilst it may be true that publishers provide services we do need, and which we could pay for, it is not true that publishing and disseminating research is itself one of those services, nor that typical current providers or typical current services are the only options available to achieve our goals.
There is only one way to change this; the consumers of the product – that is, us – must stop consuming it; we must find an alternative resource to sustain our needs. At the point where the cost of acquiring our critical resource becomes prohibitively expensive, we must adapt.
Publishers are free to adapt with us, and to offer alternative resources for our consideration. But they are not free to dictate the grounds of access to our resource, unless we continue to give them that freedom.
