I hate to say this, but in my experience many (not all) of these publishers just don't seem to have much of an educational ethos, at least nowadays. The whole idea that one of their primary roles should be to disseminate valuable knowledge about psychology (or other fields) to the general public and/or to students is somehow foreign to them. But then again, I guess I'm a hopeless idealist in this regard.
A few years ago, I was editing a book of readings for undergraduate audiences. Some of the costs of reproducing the articles (including some I had written myself - see Ken Steele's message below) were so prohibitive that we couldn't use them. I told a few publishers whose costs were especially egregious (e.g., a thousand dollars or more per article) that we'd be making minimal, if any, money off of the book and that our goal was to educate undergraduates about scientific thinking in psychology. When I asked them if they was any way to lower (not eliminate) the prices so that we could use the articles for educational purposes, most of them responded to me as if I was from Mars. I would have hoped that it isn't all about the bottom line, but increasingly that seems to be the case. ..Scott ________________________________________ From: Ken Steele [[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2011 7:47 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] "Academic publishers charge vast fees to access research" I have had cynical thoughts often about the academic publishing world. One has a system in which I do the work, write up the work, fellow workers do the vetting, and all control/profit of my work goes to a for-profit company. At one point, when electronic pdf reprints were just appearing on the scene, an academic publisher wanted to charge me, the author, a lot of $$ for a pdf of an article I had written. In addition, the contract to obtain this pdf, which was written by the type of lawyers who write user agreements for commercial software, forbade me from making the pdf available to someone, like you, who could pay for the article. There is a wide-range of publishing houses and a number of low-cost publications from small academic groups. The problem is that those groups are turning over their publications to the big publishers because of time and effort issues. Ken --------------------------------------------------------------- Kenneth M. Steele, Ph.D. [email protected] Professor Department of Psychology http://www.psych.appstate.edu Appalachian State University Boone, NC 28608 USA --------------------------------------------------------------- On 8/31/2011 6:40 AM, Allen Esterson wrote: > On the high cost of academic articles for non-subscribers: > > http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/academic-publishers-murdoch-socialist?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+theguardian/commentisfree/rss+%28Comment+is+free%29 > > or: > http://tinyurl.com/3jb7sc3 > > As someone who has (reluctantly) coughed up on occasion, I'd be > interested to hear views of TIPSters on this issue. Is there economic > justification for the high cost of obtaining articles from academic > journals? > > Allen Esterson > Former lecturer, Science Department > Southwark College, London > [email protected] > http://www.esterson.org > --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13509.d0999cebc8f4ed4eb54d5317367e9b2f&n=T&l=tips&o=12347 or send a blank email to leave-12347-13509.d0999cebc8f4ed4eb54d5317367e9...@fsulist.frostburg.edu ________________________________ This e-mail message (including any attachments) is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this message (including any attachments) is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please contact the sender by reply e-mail message and destroy all copies of the original message (including attachments). --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=12348 or send a blank email to leave-12348-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
