Science Journal controversy--University of California vs. Nature
L.A. Times: UC takes scientific journals to task over fees
A proposed 400% increase in the online access fee by one publisher has some academic researchers questioning the pay model.
By Michael Hiltzik
People who cite Stewart Brand's insight that "information wants to be free" almost always forget the rest of the quote, which is: "Information also wants to be expensive."
Brand, a futurist best known for editing "The Whole Earth Catalog," meant that while the cost of disseminating information was falling sharply, the value of that information was rising. Technology makes the tension between those two poles constantly worse, he observed - which helps explain the current conflict between the University of California and a major publisher of scientific and technical journals.
The publisher is Nature Publishing Group, which puts out Nature as well as about 90 other specialized journals, many of which long have been viewed by faculty and students in the hard sciences as must-have publications.
Nature, which is owned by the German publishing house Georg von Holtzbrinck, knows this. That may be why it's trying to impose a 400% increase in its online access fee for UC, a hike the university says would come to more than $1 million a year. The result is talk of a systemwide boycott of Nature publications unless the firm becomes more accommodating.
But the dispute underscores a more far-reaching debate in academia: Whether the old business model of scientific publishing, in which researchers turn their work over to commercial entities for free, then pay through the nose to access it in print or online, hasn't reached the point of ultimate absurdity.
Much more, including an unfavorable comparison of Nature's model to PLoS's model and some insightful and snarky comments, at the link in the headline.