Rather than focus on the particular case of JSTOR, let us lift the
discussion up to the military-industrial complex level .. here being the
academic-publishing complex.
Fundamentally we have painted ourselves into the corner; our universities
and research institutions have colluded with the publishing industry to
create an inequality: the ordinary citizen cannot read the papers that are
so important to the progress of knowledge.
When looked at in this context, we have created an underclass, and worse,
harmed the overall advance of knowledge by eliminating potentially astute
participants -- the "civilians" who cannot access the publisher's knowledge
base.
Yes, we do need to recompense those performing the publishing task. But at
this point, most of the paper writers are "self publishing" anyway, using
the internet and digital media.
Our system is nearly feudal: our academic journals attempt to be so
selective as to provide a (useful) need: referees of the worth of the
papers. A (generally) welcome filtering function. They in turn are
aggregated into large collections like JSTOR so that universities can access
them with lower cost. This too is reasonable. Feudal but reasonable.
But this intertwined matrix has evolved to be both obsolete due to the web
an harmful do to moving from protecting knowledge to making it available
only to the select.
Like buggy whip makers, publishing has to evolve. Clearly they do provide
useful service. But now they need to get on with it, letting "the rest of
us" have access.
-- Owen
On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 6:56 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES <[email protected]> wrote:
> Owen,
> There was a lot of interesting back and forth on one of the history of
> psychology lists a few weeks ago regarding JSTOR. They have (and they claim
> they generously have) recently made all papers pre-1923 open access. This
> is clearly a boon to anyone interested in the history of any academic field.
> However, there was a question over whether it was significant, as anything
> pre-1923 is public domain. I insisted that it was at least a little
> generous, because their scans are not public domain, and, at any rate, JSTOR
> is under no obligation to let Joe Schmo access such articles through their
> search system.
>
> The case of current articles, and articles produced as a result of
> government grants, is a little different, but I'm still not convinced JSTOR
> is in any wrong. Why aren't people blaming the journals, and demanding that
> the journals publishing these articles be free? That is, why are we bothered
> that the electronic version is not free, but we tacitly accept that the
> print version should cost money? For that matter, why not just blame the
> authors? Why not pressure the authors themselves to simply post the results
> publicly on a webpages for all to see? Frankly, that would be easy for all
> government funded research to be available for free.
>
> JSTOR is just a distributor, why blame the distributor?
>
> Just some thoughts,
> Eric
>
> On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 06:02 PM, *Owen Densmore <[email protected]>*wrote:
>
> Interesting sum-up of the JSTOR battle, and paid-by-taxpayer academic
> papers being sold.
>
> http://www.badscience.net/2011/09/academic-papers-are-hidden-from-the-public-heres-some-direct-action/
>
> The article admits that there are reasons for pay-walls when the site
> "adds value" by scanning old papers for example. But they, like most of us
> I think, believe there are other ways to make papers available and allow
> JSTOR and their like flourish.
>
> I think its simple: if the papers are pay-walled for long enough, pressure
> will develop, and either a Wiki-Leaks stunt will occur, or China and/or
> India will just hack the sites so that their students have free access.
>
> -- Owen
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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>
> Eric Charles
>
> Professional Student and
> Assistant Professor of Psychology
> Penn State University
> Altoona, PA 16601
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>
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