Economist: "When research is funded by the taxpayer or by charities, the results should be available to all without charge"
Academic publishing Open sesame When research is funded by the taxpayer or by charities, the results should be available to all without charge Apr 14th 2012 | from the print edition PUBLISHING obscure academic journals is that rare thing in the media industry: a licence to print money. An annual subscription to /Tetrahedron/, a chemistry journal, will cost your university library $20,269; a year of the /Journal of Mathematical Sciences/ will set you back $20,100. In 2011 Elsevier, the biggest academic-journal publisher, made a profit of £768m ($1.2 billion) on revenues of £2.1 billion. Such margins (37%, up from 36% in 2010) are possible because the journals' content is largely provided free by researchers, and the academics who peer-review their papers are usually unpaid volunteers. The journals are then sold to the very universities that provide the free content and labour. For publicly funded research, the result is that the academics and taxpayers who were responsible for its creation have to pay to read it. This is not merely absurd and unjust; it also hampers education and research. [...] Continua qui: http://www.economist.com/node/21552574
Letto solo ora. Breve ma davvero molto incisivo. On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 10:21 AM, J.C. DE MARTIN <demartin@polito.it> wrote:
Academic publishing
Open sesame
When research is funded by the taxpayer or by charities, the results should be available to all without charge
Apr 14th 2012 | from the print edition
PUBLISHING obscure academic journals is that rare thing in the media industry: a licence to print money. An annual subscription to Tetrahedron, a chemistry journal, will cost your university library $20,269; a year of the Journal of Mathematical Sciences will set you back $20,100. In 2011 Elsevier, the biggest academic-journal publisher, made a profit of £768m ($1.2 billion) on revenues of £2.1 billion. Such margins (37%, up from 36% in 2010) are possible because the journals’ content is largely provided free by researchers, and the academics who peer-review their papers are usually unpaid volunteers. The journals are then sold to the very universities that provide the free content and labour. For publicly funded research, the result is that the academics and taxpayers who were responsible for its creation have to pay to read it. This is not merely absurd and unjust; it also hampers education and research.
[...]
Continua qui: http://www.economist.com/node/21552574
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-- Marco De Rossi Oilproject - Be Free To Learn ( http://www.oilproject.org/ ) Pangloss: Poteva andar peggio, poteva piovere ( http://pangloss.info/ ) "Pensare, analizzare, inventare - mi scrisse pure - non sono atti anomali, sono la normale respirazione dell'intelligenza. Glorificare l'occasionale esercizio di questa funzione, tesaurizzare pensieri antichi e lontani, ricordare con incredulo stupore ciò che il doctor universalis pensò, è confessare il nostro languore o la nostra barbarie. Ogni uomo dev'essere capace di ogni idea, e credo che nell'avvenire sarà così" da "Pierre Menard, autore del Chisciotte", Finzioni, Jorge Luis Borges
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Marco De Rossi