Dear Julie and all, I've recently read the same kind of articles in my country. To make the story short, it was pointing the facts that:
- we get money mainly from public fundings to do our research - our research brings paper that we make for free for academic publishing - peer reviewers also work for free in many cases - academic publishing sells our papers at high price to academic libraries which also relies on public fundings. - now with all electronic libraries, if you cancel a subscription you lost the content you paid therefore in a sense academic publishing relies directly and indirectly twice on public fundings and make us work for free for them. Breaking the vicious circle is not easy. One way is to encourage scientist to participate to open access journals. Lionel 2011/9/4 Julie Messier <[email protected]>: > Dear Ecologers, > > A lab mate sent me a link to a newspaper article that I feel deserves > further discussion. In Brad Boyle's own words, it is 'a provocative and > important article in The Guardian on the racket of academic publishing': > http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/academic-publishers- > murdoch-socialist. > Also, see the original blog by George Monbiot: > http://www.monbiot.com/2011/08/29/the-lairds-of-learning/ for more > discussion on the topic. > > Are we really all being ripped off, or is this just another paranoia? If > academic publishers are indeed parasites, how do we break the vicious cycle > given that we do build our careers on publishing in high-end journals? Can > open access journals ever become 'high-end'? > > Julie Messier > > -- > PhD Candidate, > Ecology and Evolutionary Biology > University of Arizona >
