[Tccc] Research without Walls

Zegura, Ellen Witte ewz
Wed Oct 26 09:01:07 EDT 2011


I am involved in leading a discussion at Georgia Tech about whether an institutional open access policy would be appropriate.    The wikipedia page on OA is quite good:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access

Ellen

On Oct 26, 2011, at 6:19 AM, Carlos Becker Westphall wrote:

> FYI.
> 
> http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/10/25/DPLA-initiative-nearly-operational/
> 
> Digital Library Nearly Online
> 
> By GAUTAM S. KUMAR and JULIA L. RYAN, CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
> Published: Tuesday, October 25, 2011
> 
> The Digital Public Library of America, an initiative spearheaded by 
> Harvard faculty members, is making fast progress toward developing a fully 
> operational online database of existing digitized works by April 2013...
> 
> On Tue, 25 Oct 2011, Jakob Eriksson wrote:
> 
>> 
>> On Oct 25, 2011, at 12:45 PM, Joe Touch wrote:
>> 
>>> IMO, the venue is impacted much more by the quality of the papers submitted than by the quality of the reviews.
>>> 
>>> This is why, e.g., conferences in nice, warm places in the wintertime become quite competitive for good papers.
>>> 
>>> I.e., I don't debate your logic on this point, except that it's at least equally important to boycott submissions too -- the pledge doesn't make a statement about that, though.
>> 
>> This point was discussed here earlier. The choice not to mention submissions is discussed on their "about" page, and I would say the argument is well founded.
>> 
>>>> A colleague of mine chimed in with these statistics today: "Elsevier
>>>> (publishing, not the Reed Elsevier parent company) received 2 billion
>>>> EUR in revenue in 2010 and kept approximately 36% of that as profit."
>>>> 
>>>> What exactly is it that Elsevier does (not their volunteering
>>>> reviewers and authors), that justifies $2B/year of funding, and 720
>>>> million in annual profits?
>>> 
>>> A lot of publishers - and authors - make money selling books. Journals are often loss-leaders. That's what I've heard. I appreciate that I don't have inside info on this, but absent that info you're tarring an entire industry inappropriately.
>> 
>> I didn't want to make the message too long. However, the same colleague provided the following numbers:
>> 
>> "An Elsevier statement from 2007 says that Elsevier's 'Science and
>> Technology' division contributed 51% of 'total Elsevier revenue' and
>> that 77% of this 51% was from journals. An Elsevier statement in July
>> 2009 said that "electronic revenue" from academics and governments "has
>> grown to approximately 90% of Elsevier's total journal revenue.' "
>> 
>> Assuming these numbers are correct, which I have every reason to believe, Elsevier journals are much closer to "cash cow" than "loss leader". :-) Here are some numbers on how much my university library pays for our various subscriptions:
>> 
>> Elsevier: $1,235,800
>> Springer: ~$700,000 (estimated)
>> IEEE: $93,497.50
>> ACM: $4,579.86
>> 
>> I'm sure this is a bit skewed by our ginormous medical school, but some of those numbers are pretty scary. For the record, I'm not sure about the accuracy of the ACM number, it may not include the Digital Library (since it looks rather affordable).
>> 
>>> I'll note that you yourself published a number of papers in IEEE venues - and the IEEE charges for access.
>> 
>> Yes, in the past I have signed away my rights to much of my written work. It is not something I am proud of, but it is something I would like to try putting a stop to, without destroying my career in the meantime.
>> 
>>> Is there some reason that's not legitimate? Is this about charging for access to research, or for overcharging?
>> 
>> 
>> To me, it is not about the price, it is about ownership. I want to retain ownership of the documents that I created. At the very least, I should have an absolute right to publish them for free, unrestricted download directly from my webpage.
>> 
>> I could live with restrictions on for-profit re-publication, which would probably be enough to support the day-to-day operations of publishers.
>> 
>> Jakob Eriksson
>> Assistant Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago
>> phone: (312)77-JAKOB
>> 851 S Morgan (M/C 152), Room 1120 SEO, Chicago, IL 60607-7053
>> _______________________________________________
>> IEEE Communications Society Tech. Committee on Computer Communications
>> (TCCC) - for discussions on computer networking and communication.
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>> https://lists.cs.columbia.edu/cucslists/listinfo/tccc
>> 
> _______________________________________________
> IEEE Communications Society Tech. Committee on Computer Communications
> (TCCC) - for discussions on computer networking and communication.
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