It’s one of those weeks where the clanking chains of the ancient devices of academic publishers have been more than a bit annoying, and it looks like no amount of WD40 will smooth the transition into digital delivery without first demolishing these anachronistic machines and their devilish DRM schemes.
This morning on NPR there was a bit on how public libraries need to subscribe each year to access the same digital files for eBooks, in order to provide these in serial increments to individual users. No overdue books here, the narrator notes, the digital files simply disappear from the user’s device, forcing them to queue up (and wait for weeks or months) until the digital file is again available. The more popular the book, the longer the wait.
I also had the opportunity to search for and find a book published by an academic press in Europe, and was informed by their website that I could download a digital copy for only $100+. Makes the iTunes bookstore seem cheap.
And then, with a link from William Gunn, I made myself read a response to the open access demands by scholars, students, and libraries, by a (IMHO fatuous) mouthpiece of the publishing industry in the Guardian. At one point he justifies the bloated profits of the industry by noting that they pay taxes on these (not if they can help it) and the government uses these taxes to fund (wait for it)… research. For profit academic publishers are the “research producers” that keep the wheels of science rolling. Lord help us if the (socialist) open access lumpen masses get their way.
On the more hopeful side, John Wilbanks and the Open Access Gang of Four are most of the way to a successful open access for research petition on the White House petition site. And if only the intern who programmed the Drupal user authentication for that site had hooked in a better module, then it’s likely that the necessary 25,000 signatures would have already been accomplished.
At last look, over at The Cost of Knowledge, 11,923 scholars have pledged to not give their services to Elsevier.
And, today we will find out if Redditors can oust Texas representative Lamar Smith, who co-authored SOPA.
We are all waiting for everything to digital and available and searchable and browsable, and linked, and curated, filtered and yet without the bubble, semantically rich, and, of course, free. We are not there yet, plenty of cruft to clear away. Time to point the Hulk at the entire academic publishing enterprise and say “SMASH.” It couldn’t hurt.
Virtual Democracy 