The Academic Journal Racket
Harvard Now Spending Nearly $3.75 Million on Academic Journal Bundles
Harvard may be the second-wealthiest nonprofit institution in the world (right behind the Catholic Church) but even so the price tag for its collection of academic journal bundles lining its libraries’ shelves is too high: close to $3.75 million, according to a memo from a faculty committee released last week. Some journals cost as much as $40,000.
The academic publishing industry is renowned for its unwieldy market power, which has enabled it to push prices ever upward, keep research locked away for subscribers only, even though its product is the fundamentally the result of university-paid faculty working on publicly-funded research. As Geroge Monbiot explains in The Guardian:
What we see here is pure rentier capitalism: monopolising a public resource then charging exorbitant fees to use it. Another term for it is economic parasitism. To obtain the knowledge for which we have already paid, we must surrender our feu to the lairds of learning.
In the sleepy halls of the ivory tower, a revolt is underway. Business models of yesteryear are being assaulted from every direction. First it was the textbook lock-in, then teaching assistants marched for fair wages, then rising tuition fees were much maligned, and now the academic journal mafia is about to get the shakedown. It is about time.
When a journal costs $40,000 per year, there can be little doubt that legitimate complaints will arise. Even with the low numbers of subscriptions and costs associated with the publication of such journals, it is hard to see how the vast portion of the fees are pure profit for the publishing houses. Now that Harvard has woken up, maybe, just maybe, the death grip that the publishers have on research publication will loosen and more novel and cost effective models will emerge.
I am pretty sure we are close to seeing community funded research publications and open source research journals, available online or little to no cost for everyone. One bit of irony is that the original intent of the Internet and World Wide Web was to provide that very platform for universities and researchers, but hopefully this time around the Internet will win.
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