The legislature of my state has reached the following conclusions:
1. Taxpayers pay professors to work.
2. Ergo, the research professors produce belongs to taxpayers.
3. Ergo, taxpayers should have access to the research professors produce.
4. Ergo, professors should be obligated by law to place all of their research* into an online open access database.
The problem with this line of reasoning is the following. Academic journals are struggling to stay in existence. It costs money (not a huge amount but still) to print a scholarly journal. Universities increasingly refuse to support academic journals financially. In order to remain in existence and keep publishing, journals have to sell subscriptions. If nobody buys subscriptions, the journal dies.
Is everybody with me so far? Because I’m getting suspicious that this is too complicated for most people.
Since journals need subscriptions to survive, they need a way to ensure that their content is unique enough. If you can find the journal’s materials for free online, would you buy a subscription? How much would you personally agree to pay for a subscription to this blog if the blog keeps offering an open and free access? I’m guessing nothing.
Do you believe journals will agree to the idea that their articles should be available for free online? Obviously, they won’t. There is no possibility that a library will agree to pay a subscription to a journal whose content is easily available for free on the Internet. There is also no possibility that a library can justify such a bizarre purchase, especially given that library funding is getting slashed everywhere.
So obviously, journals will not agree to sign a permission for me to place my article that the journal published online. So obviously, I should either stop trying to get published or resign myself to breaking state law. Neither alternative seems enormously attractive.
The problem that this law is trying to solve doesn’t exist. Taxpayers who are so desperate to read my research could simply request a copy of my article from the library. Or they could contact me directly since my contact information is publicly available. There has never been a single complaint from a single taxpayer who was dying to read my article on a novel by the Spanish writer Galdós and was suffering for lack of access. If such a taxpayer exists, please point her in my direction and I will make her a happy woman.
Every time when an article is published in a prestigious scholarly journal in the US, Canada, UK, Spain, etc. and is signed by “Prof. Clarissa Bulochkina, University of Koompi-Loompi”, this helps Koompi-Loompi to get noticed as a place where high-quality research is conducted. As a result, the value of the degrees awarded by Koompi-Loompi grows. Taxpayers benefit from getting more valuable degrees. Am I explaining this process clearly enough, or is my argument too academic?
Bulochkina gets published, Koompi-Loompi wins. Bulochkina doesn’t get published, Koompi-Loompi loses. Does it make sense to hurt Koompi-Loompi’s chances of generating a positive image in order to solve a problem that does not exist?
Instead of this imaginary problem, Koompi-Loompi has a real one: its name isn’t well-known, especially not in the context of scholarly excellence. Bulochkina’s “spectacular record of publications” (according to her dean at Koompi-Loompi) helps solve that problem. Should we prevent Bulochkina from getting published? Will that somehow advance the interests of the state where she works?
“We need to embrace this as the trend of the future!” joyfully proclaimed an administrator who, in his entire life, has read less than I have published.
* If you are a professor of, say, Music, this means that you are obligated by law to place your music, the music that you created, into said open access online database. The same goes for sculptors, painters, dancers, etc. Please try to imagine the feelings of an artist who is ordered to place her artwork into an open database.
And now imagine the feelings of, say, a Professor in Biomedical Sciences. As one colleague said, “It’s one thing to open my research (and this is not just finished research, mind you. This is research at all stages) to the taxpayers of Illinois. But you are telling me to make my research freely available to everybody in the world. Tomorrow, somebody in China or Russia – somebody who doesn’t open his research to me, obviously – will just take my work and use it. Or sell it. How can I be expected to produce anything under these conditions?”
As you can imagine nobody is providing an answer.
P.S. There is another super cute part to this insanity. If you are co-author #11 on an article, you are still obligated to place it into the open access database. And now try selling this idea to co-authors #1-10 who do not live in the state of Illinois and have no relationship to its taxpayers.
Clarissa's Blog 
I think tax payers should be forcibly educated by research professors. They demand it.
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The thing is, taxpayers are not expressing any concerns with not being able to read my articles. Especially since many of said articles are in Spanish. I am yet to meet a single taxpayer battling depression and withering away because of lack of access to my scholarship. My scholarship is valuable but not to that extent. The rumors about the people of Illinois dropping off like flies because they can’t read my articles are vastly exaggerated.
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Yes, I see.
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From the viewpoint of the market economy, this is a proof that your research is inconsequential and should not be supported by taxpayers’ money. So you actually should not attempt using this line of reasoning in the presence of any bureaucrat. (I hope you understand I am being sarcastic…)
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“From the viewpoint of the market economy, this is a proof that your research is inconsequential and should not be supported by taxpayers’ money.”
– There is not a single business in the world that doesn’t protect its trade secrets, its customer base, its list of contacts, etc.
“So you actually should not attempt using this line of reasoning in the presence of any bureaucrat.”
– The words “reasoning” and “bureaucrat” should not be used in the same sentence. 🙂
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—– There is not a single business in the world that doesn’t protect its trade secrets, its customer base, its list of contacts, etc.
They are protected because someone is interested in them. Investing money into protecting some “trade secrets” no one is interested in is a bad investment. Claiming that no taxpayer showed any interest in your research… not the best thing to do, IMHO.
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“They are protected because someone is interested in them.”
– Yes, the competitors. The same as, I’m sure, your competitors with whom you are not sharing the fruits of your research before you are good and ready. Taxpayers don’t get access to my teaching for free. Why should they get access to research for free? I’m seriously not getting this logic.
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The same thing happened to the whole online journalism. However this would be even worse. Academic articles and researches make a significant part of the immaterial wealth of a country. Making them completely free to anyone on the internet is the same thing as if the state started to give away the country’s monetary gold to random taxpayers (and also to citizens of other countries) for free. It serves nobody, neither the universities nor the taxpayers, not even the university administrators who should learn at least the definition of immaterial wealth which is usually taught in Finances 101.
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Excellent observation
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No, no, no, no, no. Gold is rivalrous. Information is non-rivalrous. I think open access journals are a fine idea that I’d like to see win out over ones behind paywalls, but I rather see it encouraged than mandated. Attract more critters with honey than vinegar, whatever.
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“I think open access journals are a fine idea that I’d like to see win out over ones behind paywalls, but I rather see it encouraged than mandated.”
– I agree! I submit my work to open-access journals. And I submit my work to new, young journals created by people with non-mainstream political beliefs. But that is my choice. I need to be able to choose how to organize my own scholarship because nobody is a better specialist on it than me.
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Only the distribution of information is non-rivalrous, but from a business point of view it is definitely rivalrous. Especially in information-and knowledge-heavy industries. Otherwise people wouldn’t pay that much for licenses, copyrights and know-hows, or for lawyers and counsellors. With the right kind of information you can earn the same volume of money/power as with a certain amount of gold. Alternative free journals can be a good idea, but if the providers of knowledge are permanently forced to work without a financial motivation, sooner or later there will be serious problems with the quality of their research.
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“Alternative free journals can be a good idea, but if the providers of knowledge are permanently forced to work without a financial motivation, sooner or later there will be serious problems with the quality of their research.”
– Exactly. I’m a human being, not a robot. My research ultimately needs to advance my goals. Otherwise, we slide into Stalinism where Stalin would incarcerate scientists, so that they would just produce research without being distracted by silly things like having lives.
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Scholars and researchers went to the USA from the whole world (especially from Eastern-Europe) because there they got the financial rewards that was enough for them to lead a calm and stabile lifestyle which was the necessary background of a high-quality mental work. This move is surprising from the USA. I thought one of the core pillars of their economic development was the brain drain from poorer countries. Now it seems they want to stop to motivate even their own home-grown brains.
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“This move is surprising from the USA. I thought one of the core pillars of their economic development was the brain drain from poorer countries. Now it seems they want to stop to motivate even their own home-grown brains.”
– Yep. Exactly. Read my most recent post for proof that you are absolutely right.
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Somehow I just knew you were a young punk scholar!
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“Young punk scholars: Publish only in open-access journals in protest, especially if you’re in a new field. This may cost you advancement or tenure, but you know it’s the right thing to do.”
– This part is especially cute.
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People just don’t get it. Ugh!!!
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University presses and scholarly journals sponsored societies may be struggling financially, but Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, Springer, and Wiley have healthy profits, and since at least the 1980s, they have gotten away with increasing their prices at double the consumer price index, year after year, compounding.
One year’s subscription to the Journal of the American Mathematical Society costs a university library about $400.
One year’s subscription to Advances in Applied Mathematics from Elsevier costs a university library close to $1200.
Some university libraries launching publication hosting services because the librarians know the cost of production is low relative to the prices they are paying for journals and think that their universities would be better off financially by paying directly for the cost of production, even if the content is given away free, than they are paying the cost of production plus the 200% markup of commercial publishers.
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So you are supporting this measure??
I’m going to go jump off a cliff now. We are going to battle Taylor & Francis by burying my research career?
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Then there’s single article downloads at, what is it, $30 a pop?
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“Then there’s single article downloads at, what is it, $30 a pop?”
– My library pays for all that. As it should be.
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Anyone can walk in and use the library. Do the taxpayers say they should all be able to attend classes for free as well?
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Not this one:
http://www.londonlibrary.co.uk/
A mere snip at roughly £40 per month …
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I am talking about US university libraries that are taxpayer supported.
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So I have to beg to get money to fund my research (can you tell I am still pooped and stressed from finishing my very first SSHRC application?) but whatever I produce I hand over for free? Noooo thank you.
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Good luck with SSHRC! I hope you get it. At least, in Canada it is still possible to get decent funding for our disciplines.
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Thank you! 🙂 I apparently have a fair chance of getting one, and I’m very proud of my research topic. I’ll find out in Spring 2015 whether I got one!
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I’m assuming now that at some point private benefactors will step in to keep certain journals going.
I don’t know how long it will take but I think journal editors (especially in the liberal arts and sciences) should be looking for private sponsorship (STEM journals will probably simply be bought be private companies who will then get first dibs on useful content).
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We have been having this whole stupid debate in the UK for some years now and it has sadly come to fruition this year (Open Access – the stupidest, most pointless, most needlessly time-and-resource-consuming thing ever). As it currently stands, we will no longer be able to submit research outputs to our big national evaluation that happens every 6-7 years unless they are open access (which involves paying high fees to publishers and wasting time on pointless paperwork). I agree completely with everything you’ve written!
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And I keep wondering – where are all those anti-Big Government folks while this is going on? Why are they so indifferent to Big Government destroying our scholarship and handing our scholarly advantage to other countries for free?
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\\ Why are they so indifferent to Big Government destroying our scholarship and handing our scholarly advantage to other countries for free?
May be, one can use their own rhetoric against them?
“Big Government handing our scholarly advantage to other countries for free” is a great phrase.
One must be political here in a way, know to which words and expressions people will react, “dog-whistle” politics. Do you know somebody who is good at playing such games?
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Did you know that you can have a hedgehog timer on the cheap?
http://www.kikkerland.com/products/kitchen-timer-hedghog/
I know you won’t be able to resist. 🙂
Back to the point …
I could write at length about the publishing industry problems surrounding research, but I’m of two mindsets on this: a cynical mindset, believing that a “free open forum” effectively buries oddly shaped research that may not be politically convenient, and a conspiratorial mindset, in which lowering the value of research artificially through oddly shaped government requirements tends to lower the valuation (and expense) of researchers.
The general gist of the first mindset is that by forcing the work into a “free open forum”, the value has been lowered because the work no longer can demand sufficient cachet or attention. Publishing in a journal with prestige, by comparison, at least ensures that some people who may otherwise be inattentive will pay attention for some time.
By extension, this is pretty much the best argument that’s in favour of publishing with a big publisher: you’ll at least be guaranteed access to the “publisher tables” at major bookshops, which is to say that cachet, access, and location still matter.
If I’m considering the case as a politician and not as a scholar or an artist, the risk of change that may be incurred by the odd bit of inconvenient research overrides any concerns for the researchers producing it. “Lumping it together” serves the same purpose in this respect as suppressing the research altogether, and in order to make sure some of this research wouldn’t come back to bite me, I’d colour the argument in favour of a “free open forum” with as much faux democratic sentiment as possible.
Should you complain too loudly about being forced into publication through a state-sponsored publication of last resort, I would then implement a Sir Humphrey Appleby-like set of well-cloaked criticisms, insinuating such awful things as “working for a state university isn’t good enough for Professor Heffalump Chiffonier” and such like.
At this point, all of the control mechanisms described in detail within George Orwell’s “The Prevention of Literature” meet with appropriately matching effects.
The second mindset follows from economics, in which the research has value added to it by the publisher not merely on the basis of cost-based scarcity, but also on the basis that the publisher has created improved value by collecting what might otherwise be a bin of “odd socks” and has turned it into some kind of “sock fashion show”. This is not necessarily to be scoffed at because of the high cost of gaining attention.
Forcing research into a supposedly “free open forum” with “free open access” lowers the value of the research in raw economic terms in addition to serving cynical political interests. This also makes it considerably more difficult to gain attention.
The précis form: they believe you’re paid too dearly for your research, and they want to force reductions of expense on your research as well as possibly a corrosion of your character (ala Richard Sennett) in order to gain your compliance.
If you want to do research, form your own limited company and do work for a mostly benign Doctor Moriarty, at least if you can’t embrace the Evil of Doctor Evil. 🙂
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“Did you know that you can have a hedgehog timer on the cheap?”
– What a cute little thing! With a pink face! I love it!
“Should you complain too loudly about being forced into publication through a state-sponsored publication of last resort, I would then implement a Sir Humphrey Appleby-like set of well-cloaked criticisms, insinuating such awful things as “working for a state university isn’t good enough for Professor Heffalump Chiffonier” and such like.”
– Exactly. If I had a suspicion that my colleagues would support me on this, then it wouldn’t mind. But I don’t believe they will.
“Forcing research into a supposedly “free open forum” with “free open access” lowers the value of the research in raw economic terms in addition to serving cynical political interests. This also makes it considerably more difficult to gain attention.The précis form: they believe you’re paid too dearly for your research, and they want to force reductions of expense on your research as well as possibly a corrosion of your character (ala Richard Sennett) in order to gain your compliance.”
– Truer words were never spoken.
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Can you write a letter explaining your concerns:
how it’ll hurt citizens and students of your state,
how it’s not the way academic community functions internationally,
how everybody will use it w/o giving their research to you,
AND how in STEM fields, where often many researchers from different states and countries work together, nobody would be ready to work with people from your university!
I think people will be influenced by the last point the most since STEM is held in high regard, unlike humanities. Also, “other countries will steal our wealth” sounds like it will influence people.
What about
sending this letter to all people in “the legislature of my state”,
publishing it in the state’s newspapers as an open letter to legislators and the public,
creating a petition and telling about it to students – putting a notice on university’s website,
turning to profs and students in other affected universities,
etc.
\\ Please try to imagine the feelings of an artist who is ordered to place her artwork into an open database.
Why are his feelings worse than yours?
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“Why are his feelings worse than yours?”
– They are more emotional, I guess. 🙂 🙂 Remember my comment at the committee: ““I agree that the proposal is vague and poorly written. But I thought, hey, this is an artist, and we can’t expect artists to express themselves clearly and logically. They are. . . you know. . . artists”? 🙂
“Can you write a letter explaining your concerns:
how it’ll hurt citizens and students of your state,
how it’s not the way academic community functions internationally,
how everybody will use it w/o giving their research to you,”
– I’m trying to gauge how my colleagues will react. Sadly, I’m seeing two reactions:
a) indifference;
b) joy.
I don’t think I will be supported. But let’s hope I’m wrong.
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how it’s not the way academic community functions internationally,
Unfortunately that is not correct – see my comment below, that is exactly how the academic community functions internationally more and more.
And actually, OA is good for getting more exposure (more researchers reading your papers in e.g. countries that normally can not afford subsrciptions) and increase your profile through citations, so it’s not all bad.
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“And actually, OA is good for getting more exposure (more researchers reading your papers in e.g. countries that normally can not afford subsrciptions) and increase your profile through citations, so it’s not all bad.”
– And what did I say about nobody supporting me on this? 🙂 This is a fight that’s doomed long before it began.
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It’s not I’m not supporting you :), I’m just trying to explain that this is much bigger than just your university or your state and like it or not, will probably soon be everyone’s reality.
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the absolute majority of the people in the world does not live in North America or Western Europe. And while we are playing these bizarre games, they will steal our scholarly advantage.
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I don’t think of this like you say, that they will steal the scholarly advantage, I think it’s actually good for research to be more accessible to people everywhere. Don’t you like the idea that more people would be able to read your work, see your brilliant ideas and cite your papers? I’m not trying to oppose you, I’m genuinely curious why you view this as a problem. 🙂
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“Don’t you like the idea that more people would be able to read your work, see your brilliant ideas and cite your papers?”
– GOOD question. I’m trying to have a career as a scholar. My main goal – that’s the central goal of my entire existence – is to become one of the leading scholars in the field of Hispanic Studies. With all due respect to people, their interests, curiosity or anything else can never override the importance of this goal to me. I have this path very well planned. I need regular publications in a very small number of very specific journals. A 100 open-access pieces will not bring me the value of one piece in a specific Taylor & Francis journal. And I do publish in open-access journals every once in a while. But only when I decide that it will not hurt my central goal.
“I think it’s actually good for research to be more accessible to people everywhere”
– And you are absolutely entitled to think that. Especially about your own research. But I think differently about mine. Why should your thoughts about your research trump my thoughts about mine, you know? [I don’t mean you personally, of course.] I would never want to prevent you from using open access by force, never.
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Ups, sorry, I used my other pseudonim, I am still Pika, if you could, please, change that in my previous comment.
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I’m not against open access journals per se. I published in one open access journal (that is very competitive) and I’m happy my work is there. Personally I have a problem with the mandate Clarissa describes.
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“I’m not against open access journals per se. I published in one open access journal (that is very competitive) and I’m happy my work is there. Personally I have a problem with the mandate Clarissa describes.”
– That’s precisely what I’m saying. Why I can’t be trusted to know how to best disseminate my own research? If I’m trusted to conduct it, shouldn’t I be trusted to know how to make it available to those who need it? For the same reason, I resent any attempts to control the textbooks I use or the way I run my classroom. I’m well-qualified. I’m a responsible worker. I know what I’m doing.
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Steal is such a negative word for what we in African academia would like to do with regard to equalizing access to scholarly resources with the privilleged white universities in the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia.
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I’m not offering any opinions about Africa because I have zero knowledge. But do I need to quote Putin’s Valdai speech again? He said very directly that he wants world dominance.
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Oh I think we are totally misunderstanding each other. They way OA is done here is that you put the non-typeset version (preprint) of the paper that you publish in the prestigious journal online into your institutional repository, so the people who do not have subscription to the journal can access it as well as those who do. For example, here is a random paper I chose from the Oxford OA repository:
http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:b94e762e-0dd8-4728-92fc-8cb7535a8252
On the right side there is a PRMpaper….doc, which is the free preprint, uploaded by the authors in the university repository (you will notice it is not formatted). I.e. it has been made OA by uploading it here and usually the publisher allows this (the conditions are in the copyright agreement, but usually a non-typeset preprint is ok, sometimes also a typeset pdf is ok after an embargo period).
Below this, there is a link to the Publisher copy, which takes you to the official journal page (in this case Sage publications) and there you need subscription to download pdf.
So what I have been discussing is that the idea is not to *only* publish in OA journals, but to make *all* your work OA including those articles that are in prestigious subscription-only journals. This is how it works here in UK and in many other European countries. But prehaps what you have is different and I misunderstood?
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“Oh I think we are totally misunderstanding each other. They way OA is done here is that you put the non-typeset version (preprint) of the paper that you publish in the prestigious journal online into your institutional repository”
– The problem is that the prestigious journals in my field will not agree to this.
“So what I have been discussing is that the idea is not to *only* publish in OA journals, but to make *all* your work OA including those articles that are in prestigious subscription-only journals. ”
– And if the journal doesn’t want that? We are going in the direction of doing the same with books. Is there a reputable publisher who will agree to this?
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Actually, this is old news for many European countries, where we have to put everything that is funded by national and international funding agencies online in an OA repository and funding is contingent on this (some agencies even require that you include OA fees as part of your budget). Also, most of the publishers allow the pdf of your article to be put online in some form (either as accepted pre-print or even as a fully set pdf) after an initial embargo (1-2 years, depending on your copyright agreement – check the ones that you signed when you approved the proofs for your articles, most likely there are provisions there for this).
For example, see here the OA repository of Oxford:
http://openaccess.ox.ac.uk/home-2/what-do-i-need-to-do/
And here the one of ETH Zurich (they started this in 2008):
http://e-collection.library.ethz.ch/index.php?&lang=en
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“Also, most of the publishers allow the pdf of your article to be put online in some form (either as accepted pre-print or even as a fully set pdf) after an initial embargo”
– Not in my field. A colleague wanted to include the material from her article into her book and had to pay almost $6,000 to the journal where the article had appeared for copyright.
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That is different. Open access means putting a pdf of your paper online. It does not mean including it into another publication. Also, there are different ways of making a paper open access:
– either you publish in an open access journal (e.g. PLoS One) and pay a fee to have it open immediately, this also applies for normal journals where publishers allow open access directly,
– or you do it for free, which means that after usually an embargo period you upload an unformatted preprint pdf (usually as the one you submitted before it was typeset) to your insitutional library.
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—Every time when an article is published in a prestigious scholarly journal in the US, Canada, UK, Spain, etc. and is signed by “Prof. Clarissa Bulochkina, University of Koompi-Loompi”, this helps Koompi-Loompi to get noticed as a place where high-quality research is conducted.
Let me be very cynical here. The only reason the university cares about your research (or mine) is because making a claim “we have high-profile researchers as professors” is a marketing tool aimed at increasing enrollment. (In case of big grants, more typical for STEM fields, the university would also make money from overhead… But again, the quality of your research is not an end in itself, it is important only as long as it helps you get large grants and bring university more money as overhead. And the only way to really have an upper hand over university bureaucrats is to have your grant overhead exceed your salary and your start-up, if you had one.) So if some considerations actually prevent the university from increasing enrollment and profits (e.g. state-wide budget cuts, or just a shift in public opinion making the quality of research not an important factor for potential students making their decisions), your publication record becomes of zero value to the university.
As for degrees of university X becoming of higher value and this somehow benefiting the taxpayers… This is actually related to your other post, where you mentioned that empires supposedly need a large pool of educated people. Society’s (or empire’s) demand for highly-educated people capable of creating new knowledge, of inventing something new, can be satisfied by top 20% of the universities. For other people it is of no consequence if their degree is from Koompi-Loompi or Utopordia, they just need a degree, because it is customary to expect a degree from people in some positions. (Some employers do not even make a distinction between face-to-face universities and online ones.) But, in principle, the job could be performed by a graduate of a vocational school. Taking it a bit further in cynicism, the primary function of most people in this empire is to be consumers. Where they work, and what skills they need is only important because they somehow have to make a living to be consumers. And the empire definitely does not want the percentage of people capable of critical and analytical thinking to get too high. These people make bad consumers even if they do not engage (God forbid!) in any political action.
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“Let me be very cynical here. The only reason the university cares about your research (or mine) is because making a claim “we have high-profile researchers as professors” is a marketing tool aimed at increasing enrollment.”
– Exactly.
“So if some considerations actually prevent the university from increasing enrollment and profits (e.g. state-wide budget cuts, or just a shift in public opinion making the quality of research not an important factor for potential students making their decisions), your publication record becomes of zero value to the university.”
– We are the only campus in the region right now that is constantly increasing enrollments. And then only reason for this that I’m seeing is that we are slowly becoming a more respectable institution.
“This is actually related to your other post, where you mentioned that empires supposedly need a large pool of educated people. Society’s (or empire’s) demand for highly-educated people capable of creating new knowledge, of inventing something new, can be satisfied by top 20% of the universities.”
– Use the past tense, and I will agree completely. But that world is dying. Actually, it is dead already. People are resisting the idea but today’s BA is yesterday’s high school diploma. And tomorrow’s MA is the day before yesterday’s high school diploma. People are not ready for the contemporary job market on the strength of a high school diploma. It’s just a fact. We can bemoan it or accept it and move on.
“For other people it is of no consequence if their degree is from Koompi-Loompi or Utopordia, they just need a degree”
– This was all true 15 years ago. But no longer.
“Some employers do not even make a distinction between face-to-face universities and online ones”
– And then the company goes out of business a year later.
“But, in principle, the job could be performed by a graduate of a vocational school.”
– Which job is that, exactly? These jobs are almost all gone.
“Taking it a bit further in cynicism, the primary function of most people in this empire is to be consumers. Where they work, and what skills they need is only important because they somehow have to make a living to be consumers. And the empire definitely does not want the percentage of people capable of critical and analytical thinking to get too high. These people make bad consumers even if they do not engage (God forbid!) in any political action.”
– I’m not into conspiratorial thinking. 🙂 🙂 Unless it has to do with Putin. Had you mentioned Putin in this comment, things would be different. 🙂 (JOKE.)
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Conspiracy theories usually involve some group of conspirators… There is no group of conspirators in my model, just market economy doing self-regulation. Not being driven by the best in people. You might stop believing that self-regulation of the market economy is always for the better. 🙂 In some sense it is exactly like with communism – you need people to have certain mindset for it to work for the better, otherwise it amplifies what is worse in people.
—People are resisting the idea but today’s BA is yesterday’s high school diploma.
Yes, but IMHO it is mostly due to grade and degree inflation, not because people in most jobs are required to know more or actually know more as a result of attending the universities. I am in foul mood this semester. I am teaching a course to a very select group of “minors in interdisciplinary studies”… they are all straight-A students. Most freak out every time they get 75-80% on an assignment (which is just a higher-B grade). Some of them become impolite when they freak out – “At least do X…” (X-being something that would guarantee them an A despite everything and anything.) Most are deeply uncomfortable with anything “interdisciplinary”, despite being minors in interdisciplinary studies (but this will look cool on their resumes and supposedly increase their chances to get into graduate school). And they were not taught some important things, or were taught them only as some sort of a recipe, without knowing about its significance or the fit into the broader picture… They really could attend a vocational school instead to learn those things as recipes… Study only the things they specialize in. Do half the credits for half the money (theirs and taxpayers’)…
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“There is no group of conspirators in my model, just market economy doing self-regulation. Not being driven by the best in people. You might stop believing that self-regulation of the market economy is always for the better. ”
– I’m not seeing economy self-regulating here. I see a bunch of useless busybodies trying to regulate everything to death.
“Yes, but IMHO it is mostly due to grade and degree inflation, not because people in most jobs are required to know more or actually know more as a result of attending the universities.”
– I have to insist that students I’m seeing are overwhelmingly incapable of writing a simple sentence in English, create an email attachment or even send an email.
” I am in foul mood this semester.”
– You are telling me? Я зарапортовалась до такой степени, что кормлю мужа мылом! 🙂 Want to hang out in Montreal in early January? Or are you escaping the winter?
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“People are resisting the idea but today’s BA is yesterday’s high school diploma. And tomorrow’s MA is the day before yesterday’s high school diploma. People are not ready for the contemporary job market on the strength of a high school diploma. It’s just a fact. We can bemoan it or accept it and move on.”
You’ve said before that the nation state is divesting itself of maintaining public schools. This is just another step on that path.
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“You’ve said before that the nation state is divesting itself of maintaining public schools. This is just another step on that path.”
– As Bill Clinton tried telling us, we need to start looking out for ourselves. Nobody else will be doing that any longer. But people are still trying to massage the new reality into old certainties. I decided to stop doing that and didn’t go to the new round of budget talks today. That’s a big victory for me personally. 🙂 Hello, post-nation state.
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I feel your pain. Hug…
Early January is when? the 1st? Because then the semester starts and I’ll have to be there. I am not going anywhere too far. Only to the States for a couple of days between Christmas and New Year.
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I think I’ll be there between the 3rd and the 11th.
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I’m still having trouble connecting the line between
“1. Taxpayers pay professors to work.”
and
“2. Ergo, the research professors produce belongs to taxpayers.”
This kind of argues that anyone who pays anyone has full ownership over them and their thoughts…
This is very troubling though, I’m so sorry to hear this, but not surprised. I hope this isn’t the first of many states.
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“I’m still having trouble connecting the line between
“1. Taxpayers pay professors to work.”
and
“2. Ergo, the research professors produce belongs to taxpayers.””
– I’m also not getting this logic. Taxpayers also pay our janitor for his work but they are not expecting him to come and clean their houses, are they?
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That’s called “work for hire,” and it’s the norm for brainiac work in the private sector. I don’t know about academia. When I was in school there was a subset of the faculty that was protesting for the right to engage in “nonclassified nonproprietary research.” I would think OA publishing would further, not hinder, that goal, but I don’t know.
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“When I was in school there was a subset of the faculty that was protesting for the right to engage in “nonclassified nonproprietary research.” I would think OA publishing would further, not hinder, that goal, but I don’t know.”
– I fully support their right to do that. It would be cool if they supported my right not to do that, as well. I believe that academics are more than qualified to figure out where and how they need to be published.
“I would think OA publishing would further, not hinder, that goal, but I don’t know.”
– That’s their goal and they are entitled to it. But it’s not mine. And I believe I am equally entitled to be a different person with different goals. Why can’t we just trust people to do their job that they are qualified to do without being micromanaged by semi-literate bureaucrats who can barely tie their own shoelaces without massive assistance?
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This is so stupid. In addition to the all the reasons you mention, our research _is_ already freely available to the puiblic. All public unverisity libraries (which will have access to the published research of univeristy employees), are open to the tax paying public. While library cards/ checkig out books can cost money, entrance and access to all databases and texts while phsyically in the library is free.
So there is nothing stopping anybody from coming in to any university library, locating a certain faculty member’s published work, and reading it (and if someone is really is interested s/he can even cough up a few dollars to photocopy or print the research.)
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“So there is nothing stopping anybody from coming in to any university library, locating a certain faculty member’s published work, and reading it (and if someone is really is interested s/he can even cough up a few dollars to photocopy or print the research.)”
– Exactly. But we are also being told that our library will be killed. Not outright but gradually. Because, apparently, kids from regular, not super rich families, don’t deserve to have a library to go to.
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\\ This is so stupid. In addition to the all the reasons you mention, our research _is_ already freely available to the puiblic
Not in Israel. Only students of the same university may enter an university library after they show a student card.
A usual public library near my home has no access to databases with scholarly research.
\\ E (The Third Glance): This kind of argues that anyone who pays anyone has full ownership over them and their thoughts…
For some reason, this law made me think of communist philosophy.
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“E (The Third Glance): This kind of argues that anyone who pays anyone has full ownership over them and their thoughts…For some reason, this law made me think of communist philosophy.”
– Another idea that is being discussed is to force us to place all of the notes and drafts of what we do every day in our research online as well. This idea originates with Comrade Stalin back in 1949. The online option wasn’t there, obviously, but the attempt to control the scholars’ thinking process at every stage was.
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\\ – Another idea that is being discussed is to force us to place all of the notes and drafts of what we do every day in our research online as well.
But it makes publishing even one article impossible since nothing prevents others from stealing your ideas and publishing it themselves.
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“But it makes publishing even one article impossible since nothing prevents others from stealing your ideas and publishing it themselves.”
– Not in my field, but in the STEM fields it will be a problem.
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Found an editorial in support of the bill. It is interesting that the bill applies only to public university, and that the sponsor, in addition to being a state senator, is a professor at U. of Chicago. Perhaps you can use that to your advantage in your campaign against this. I think their framing it in terms of state taxpayers is weak and damages their own cause. Restricting access to taxpayers would have exactly the same technological implications as restricting access to journal subscribers (which is to say, digital restrictions management, DRM). Open access isn’t about the taxpayers, it’s about the knowledge economy being a kind of gift economy. This is an idea I like, although I acknowledge that it fails to provide a business model for people being paid for their work. Thing is, though, DRM simply doesn’t work and probably never will. And if it ever does, we’ll have much bigger problems, as a society.
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“Perhaps you can use that to your advantage in your campaign against this.”
– There is no campaign. I’ve been talking to my colleagues today and yesterday. They are either supremely indifferent or happy. The number of people who actually publish and in prestigious journals are. . . me and me.
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Better yet, here’s the bill: http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/BillStatus.asp?DocNum=1900&GAID=12&DocTypeID=SB&LegId=73096&SessionID=85&GA=98
Amendments 2 and 3 pretty much eviscerate the original asinine proposal. Now there only has to be a task force and a plan, and there is no way to force a university to try to ruin academic publishing.
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Our university has decided to treat the legislation much more broadly than it requires. We are running in front of this cart because we are such obedient little buddies.
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Then the good news is that the bill itself gives your faculty the power that it needs to fight back against the admincritters who are bending over backwards to placate a legislature that actually is not requiring the ruination of academic publishing. Pushing back, explaining to the public via letters to the editor and other sorts of outreach, and generally making it too hard to implement measures like this can encourage admins to decide they want to pursue some other proposal. Note, they will never say “you are right, we were wrong,” and any attempt to get such an admission will either get you nowhere or make matters worse. But they may just quietly drop an idea and move on to something else. As soon as they come up with something even approaching reasonable (or at least harmless), praise them for their brilliant leadership.
I don’t think I’m spineless, but I am cynical. In some lights, these conditions may appear similar.
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There is a way that in-state residents may be able to get access without going the open-access route. Here is a list of databases that are accessible online through my local public library. These are not (all) open access resources, but can be accessed with my library card number and library-assigned password. I have no idea what percentage of existing scholarly literature is accessible through one of these databases. It could be improved upon, I’m sure, at a cost.
The cogent argument in favor of open access research (as opposed to the non-cogent “the taxpayers funded this”), as I understand it, is that researchers are both consumers and producers of research. It is a knowledge commons that they both contribute to and draw resources from. If original research, by definition, is something previously unknown, it helps if verifying what is already known is possible (which implies, among other things, affordable).
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\\ But we are also being told that our library will be killed. Not outright but gradually. Because, apparently, kids from regular, not super rich families, don’t deserve to have a library to go to.
What do you mean by “library will be killed”?
No paper books or no Internet access to books and articles either?
You can’t have an university without library.
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“What do you mean by “library will be killed”?
No paper books or no Internet access to books and articles either?”
– No library at all. Closed down.
“You can’t have an university without library.”
– I know. Decisions will have to be made. By me, I mean.
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\\ – No library at all. Closed down.
What do those people expect students to do? What is the explanation?
Where will already existing paper books and online resources go?
\\ I’m not offering any opinions about Africa because I have zero knowledge. But do I need to quote Putin’s Valdai speech again? He said very directly that he wants world dominance.
Do you think putting your research online will help Putin to achieve his goals?
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“Do you think putting your research online will help Putin to achieve his goals?”
– Do I sound that unhinged these days? :-)))))))))))))))))) No, I was responding to a line of discussion about STEM scholarship.
“What do those people expect students to do?”
– Sit at home, in front of computer screens.
“What is the explanation?”
– The state is broke and librarians cost money.
“Where will already existing paper books and online resources go?”
– Into online databases.
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\\ Sit at home, in front of computer screens. […] – Into online databases.
I began thinking and, may be, that will happen everywhere sooner or later.
Switching to computers from paper books probably made it inevitable.
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What??? They actually said they were going to get rid of the oublic university library??? All throughout the state? ALL public univrsity libraries are being phased out?
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“They actually said they were going to get rid of the public university library??? ”
– For now, it’s just our university. Here is what our officials said (but I warn you, you will not like it, so please brace yourself): “We need to cut down costs, reduce the administrative bloat. And what are some examples of administrative bloat? Librarians!” I heard this with my own ears. The person sitting next to me was one of our librarians. She almost fell off her chair.
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WHAT??????????? Sorry for the caps. But I’m shocked!!!! Adminstrative bloat means grossly over paid officials in upper admin (like Deans)– who make well upwards of $100,000 per year. NOT librarians who make modest incomes, are _not_ administrators, and are essential to the university………..They are getting rid of your library completely? Or are they “transforming” in to something library-like? (Information center etc. etc.) I am just so shocked I don’t know how to process this information. The library is one of the most important facets of the university!
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