Re Scientific publishing is a rip-off. We fund the research – it should be free | George Monbiot | Opinion | The Guardian

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: "Jess H. Brewer" <jess () jick net>
> Subject: Re: [IP] Scientific publishing is a rip-off. We fund the research – it should be free | George Monbiot | 
> Opinion | The Guardian
> Date: September 14, 2018 11:36:12 JST
> To: dave () farber net
> Cc: Randall Head <rvhead40 () gmail com>
> Reply-To: jess () jick net
>
> Most federal governments now require all work funded by the government to be published in "Open Access Journals" 
> (OAJ) which charge the AUTHORS to publish their work, rather than charging the READERS to view it.  This sounds 
> great, but it has resulted in an exponentially growing new industry of "vanity presses" that will publish ANYTHING 
> for a price.  
>
> Meanwhile essentially every paper written in physics is immediately available for free from http://arXiv.org 
> <http://arxiv.org/> -- what is missing there is the PEER REVIEW that generates semi-reliable advice about which of 
> those papers are WORTH reading.  
>
> The solution is outlined at http://opeer.org <http://opeer.org/> 
>
> -- Jess
>
> On 09/12/2018 11:57 PM, Dave Farber wrote:
> > > https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/13/scientific-publishing-rip-off-taxpayers-fund-research 
> > > <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/13/scientific-publishing-rip-off-taxpayers-fund-research>
> > >
> > > Scientific publishing is a rip-off. We fund the research – it should be free | George Monbiot
> > >
> > > Thu 13 Sep 2018
> > > Those who take on the global industry that traps research behind paywalls are heroes, not thieves
> > >
> > >
> > > Illustration: Eva Bee
> > > Never underestimate the power of one determined person. What Carole Cadwalladr has done to Facebook and big data 
> > > <https://www.theguardian.com/profile/carolecadwalladr>, and Edward Snowden has done to the state security complex,  
> > > <https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/the-nsa-files>Alexandra Elbakyan 
> > > <https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/8/16985666/alexandra-elbakyan-sci-hub-open-access-science-papers-lawsuit> has done 
> > > to the multibillion-dollar industry that traps knowledge behind paywalls. Sci-Hub <https://sci-hub.tw/>, her pirate 
> > > web scraper service, has done more than any government to tackle one of the biggest rip-offs of the modern era: the 
> > > capture of publicly funded research that should belong to us all. Everyone should be free to learn; knowledge 
> > > should be disseminated as widely as possible. No one would publicly disagree with these sentiments. Yet governments 
> > > and universities have allowed the big academic publishers to deny these rights. Academic publishing might sound 
> > > like an obscure and fusty affair, but it uses one of the most ruthless and profitable business models 
> > > <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/academic-publishers-murdoch-socialist> of any industry.
> > >
> > > The model was pioneered by the notorious conman Robert Maxwell. He realised that, because scientists need to be 
> > > informed about all significant developments in their field, every journal that publishes academic papers can 
> > > establish a monopoly and charge outrageous fees for the transmission of knowledge. He called his discovery 
> > > <https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science> “a 
> > > perpetual financing machine”. He also realised that he could capture other people’s labour and resources for 
> > > nothing. Governments funded the research published by his company, Pergamon, while scientists wrote the articles, 
> > > reviewed them and edited the journals for free. His business model relied on the enclosure of common and public 
> > > resources. Or, to use the technical term, daylight robbery.
> > >
> > > As his other ventures ran into trouble, he sold his company to the Dutch publishing giant Elsevier. Like its major 
> > > rivals, it has sustained the model to this day, and continues to make spectacular profits 
> > > <https://www.relx.com/%7E/media/Files/R/RELX-Group/documents/reports/annual-reports/relx2017-annual-report.pdf>. 
> > > Half the world’s research is published by five companies 
> > > <https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0127502#pone.0127502.ref047>: Reed Elsevier, 
> > > Springer, Taylor & Francis, Wiley-Blackwell and the American Chemical Society. Libraries must pay a fortune for 
> > > their bundled journals, while those outside the university system are asked to pay $20, $30, sometimes $50 to read 
> > > a single article.
> > >
> > > While open-access journals have grown rapidly <https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05191-0>, researchers 
> > > still have to read the paywalled articles in commercial journals. And, because their work is assessed by those who 
> > > might fund, reward or promote them according to the impact of the journals in which they publish, many feel they 
> > > have no choice but to surrender their research to these companies. Science ministers come and go without saying a 
> > > word about this rip-off.
> > >
> > >
> > > ‘Robert Maxwell called his discovery “a perpetual financing machine”.’ Photograph: Terry O'Neill/Hulton 
> > > Archive/Getty Images
> > > After my cancer diagnosis 
> > > <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/13/prostate-cancer-happy-diagnosis-operation> this year, I was 
> > > offered a choice of treatments. I wanted to make an informed decision. This meant reading scientific papers. Had I 
> > > not used the stolen material provided by Sci-Hub, it would have cost me thousands. Because I, like most people, 
> > > don’t have this kind of money <https://www.monbiot.com/registry-of-interests/>, I would have given up before I was 
> > > properly informed. I have never met Elbakyan, and I can only speculate about alternative outcomes had the research 
> > > I read not swayed my decision. But it is possible that she has saved my life.
> > >
> > > Like people in many countries where scholarship is poorly funded, Elbakyan discovered that she could not complete 
> > > her neuroscience research without pirated articles. Outraged by the journals’ padlock on knowledge, she used her 
> > > hacking skills <http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6285/511> to share papers more widely. Sci-Hub allows 
> > > free access to 70m papers, otherwise locked behind paywalls.
> > >
> > > She was sued in 2015 by Elsevier, which won $15m in damages for copyright infringement 
> > > <https://www.nature.com/news/us-court-grants-elsevier-millions-in-damages-from-sci-hub-1.22196>, and in 2017 by the 
> > > American Chemical Society, resulting in a $4.8m fine 
> > > <https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/american-chemical-society-wins-lawsuit-against-sci-hub-30648>. These 
> > > were civil cases, concerning civil matters. While the US courts have characterised her activities as copyright 
> > > violation and data theft, to me her work involves the restoration to the public realm of property that belongs to 
> > > us and for which we have paid. In the great majority of cases, the research reported has been funded by taxpayers. 
> > > Most of the work involved in writing the papers, reviewing and editing them is carried out at public expense by 
> > > people at universities. Yet this public asset has been captured, packaged and sold back to us for phenomenal fees. 
> > > Those who pay most are publicly funded libraries. Taxpayers must shell out twice: first for the research, then to 
> > > see the work they have sponsored. There might be legal justifications for this practice. There are no ethical 
> > > justifications.
> > >
> > > Alexandra Elbakyan lives in hiding 
> > > <https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/meet-the-woman-who-put-50-million-stolen-articles-online-so-you-can-read-them-for-free-a6964176.html>,
> > >  beyond the jurisdiction of the US courts, and moves Sci-Hub between domains as it gets taken down. She is by no 
> > > means the only person to have challenged the big publishers. The Public Library of Science 
> > > <https://www.motherjones.com/media/2013/09/michael-eisen-plos-open-access-aaron-swartz/2/>, founded by researchers 
> > > who objected not only to the industry’s denial of public access but also its slow, antiquated and clumsy modes of 
> > > publishing <http://bjoern.brembs.net/2017/08/7-functionalities-the-scholarly-literature-should-have/> that hold 
> > > back scientific research, has demonstrated that you don’t need paywalls to produce excellent journals. Advocates 
> > > like Stevan Harnad <https://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/people/harnad>, Björn Brembs <http://brembs.net/>, Peter Suber 
> > > <https://cyber.harvard.edu/people/psuber> and Michael Eisen <http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/> have changed the 
> > > public mood. The brilliant online innovator Aaron Swartz 
> > > <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/07/aaron-swartz-suicide-internets-own-boy> sought to release 5m 
> > > scientific articles into the public domain. Facing the possibility of decades in a US federal prison for this 
> > > selfless act, he took his life 
> > > <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/07/aaron-swartz-suicide-internets-own-boy>.
> > >
> > > Now libraries feel empowered to confront the big publishers. They can refuse to renew contracts with companies as 
> > > their users have another means of getting past the paywall. As the system has begun to creak, government funding 
> > > agencies have at last summoned the courage to do what they should have done decades ago, and demand the 
> > > democratisation of knowledge.
> > >
> > > Last week, a consortium of European funders, including major research agencies in the UK, France, the Netherlands 
> > > and Italy, published their “Plan S” <https://www.scienceeurope.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Plan_S.pdf>. It 
> > > insists that, from 2020, research we have already paid for through our taxes will no longer be locked up. Any 
> > > researcher receiving money from these funders must publish her or his work only in open-access journals.
> > >
> > > The publishers have gone ballistic. Springer Nature argues that  
> > > <https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06178-7>this plan “potentially undermines the whole research publishing 
> > > system”. Yes, that’s the point. The publishers of the Science series maintain that 
> > > <https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/open-access-plan-in-europe-bans-publishing-in-paywalled-journals-64748> 
> > > it would “disrupt scholarly communications, be a disservice to researchers, and impinge academic freedom”. Elsevier 
> > > says, <https://twitter.com/msphelps/status/1036968284762066945> “If you think information shouldn’t cost anything, 
> > > go to Wikipedia”, inadvertently reminding us of what happened to the commercial encyclopedias.
> > >
> > > Plan S is not perfect <https://plus.google.com/+PeterSuber/posts/iGEFpdYY9dr>, but this should be the beginning of 
> > > the end of Maxwell’s outrageous legacy. In the meantime, as a matter of principle, do not pay a penny to read an 
> > > academic article. The ethical choice is to read the stolen material published by Sci-Hub.
> > >
> > > • George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
> > >
> > > Since you’re here…
> > >
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> > >
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