Dear Julie and ECOLOG, For another analysis of the economics of journal publishing, with a focus on ecology journals, have a look at Carl Bergstrom's website
http://octavia.zoology.washington.edu/publishing/intro.html Bergstrom, a biologist, and his father, an economist, conclude that because open access journals shift publishing costs to authors, open access journals will expand in proportion to the willingness/ability of authors to pay those costs. Luke *************************** Luke K. Butler Assistant Professor Department of Biology The College of New Jersey 2000 Pennington Road Ewing, NJ 08628 609.771.2531 *************************** ----- Original Message ----- From: "Julie Messier" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Saturday, September 3, 2011 10:10:11 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Is academic publishing a racket? 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
