What’s wrong with scholarly publishing? Those who are disadvantaged speak

I publish in full an unsolicited comment, which expresses exactly why closed access publishing has become unacceptable.

Bill Roberts says:

July 14, 2011 at 8:00 am 

As a non-academic but occasional reader of published academic papers, the current system of publishing actively deters me from reading the best work of scientists. If I was a researcher working in an institution and needing to read papers every week, then I suppose the journal subscription systems are workable. But for me, every time I hit a $30/article paywall, I simply go back to google and look for blog posts or preprints (or the one or two open journals) instead.

As a researcher, then clearly there is advantage in professional status and an advantage for the institution in getting papers into prestigious journals, but this is at the cost of *actively preventing* a proportion of the potential audience for the paper from ever seeing it.

I’m sure I could get some kind of ‘affiliate membership’ of a university library and so get access that way, but the marginal benefit each time isn’t big enough to make me do that.

The web ought to be the ideal medium for coping with ‘long tail’ people like me, but as you have so clearly pointed out on several occasions, the current system of academic publishing has conspicuously failed to take advantage of the possibilities offered by the web.

Bill (who I don’t know) expresses precisely the inequity of the current system. His taxes (wherever) go to support research, go to support university libraries, but he cannot have access to the results. I am not arguing that the system should be cost-free, but that all parties should be rapidly working towards a sustainable business model. One that allows Bill to have access to the literature.

If you are an academic reading the literature, next time you celebrate another paper in NatScICell think of Bill. Think of the people suffering from the disease that you might, in years, have some comfort for. Think of the patient groups who have collected on the streets, given legacies, to fund your research. Who cannot even read what they have worked to supported. It is the arrogance of academics which is fuelling this system.

And publishers (and I have been sparing of criticism so far), think whether charging $40 to read a 1 page article for 1 day (Serials review) is advancing the cause of science. Think what the effect actually is. You are alienating Bill. The service of communication is replaced by the tyranny of gatekeeping. Bill doesn’t pay your prices and I suspect very few do. You are simply advertising that you don’t care about Bill. You can buy popular science magazines weekly for $5 – I’m not an economist but that doesn’t upset me. But $40 for 1 page for 1 day is inexcusable. And, as I shall comment on later, charging by the article ignores that fact that many readers now never read articles all the way through.

If both parties (academics and publishers) keep on in their narrow world where only the privileged exist the scholarly world will fracture. That may be sooner than we think. Murdoch had zero public support here, and has crashed. If you need public support, you won’t find it from Bill.