It's a well known fact that the business of academic journals is a racket, pure and simple. So when I found out I couldn't read
an esoteric Philosophy article without paying thirty goddamn dollars, I wrote them this very satisfying missive:
Subject: you people are the scum of the earth
Hello,
I just wanted you to know that, in my opinion, you people are a bunch of rent-seeking societal leeches who contribute nothing to society. Here I am, just an ordinary non-academic person who has taken an interest in David Hume, and who wants to better my understanding of his argument about induction by taking a look at Alan Schwerin's article Hume On Our Notion of Causality. Imagine my disgust when I see that I can have access to this completely obscure academic article for the outrageous sum of $30! Congratulations, you have effectively walled off higher education from the common man and made academic knowledge completely unavailable to a wide audience in a time, ironically, when it costs virtually nothing to disseminate information.
Just what is it that justifies this price for the privilege of downloading an electronic copy of the article, which costs you almost $0.00 to send to me? What value are you adding to the product? What on earth are you doing with the money you receive? Surely, it is not as if you yourselves peer-review all the content of your publication with your own stable of well-paid professional philosophers. And yet that is the only value added from "prestigious" journals such as yourself.
If you're reading this and nodding along and thinking, "I agree buddy, but I'm just a low-level lackey earning my paycheck in a bad economy, like everyone else", then that's fine--we all have to pay the bills. But if you get any satisfaction--or think there's anything noble at all--about the industry you work for, please understand that you are badly undermining the ability of people to pursue knowledge, and what's worse, doing so in pursuit of your own grotesque and stupid greed.
If there's any justice in the universe, your dismal company will soon be replaced by an institution that does everything you do, but for free or at an extremely low cost.
Burn in hell,
David
PS: I see in your "About Us" section your ostensible "commitment...to advance learning, knowledge and research worldwide". More like a commitment to line your own underserving, rent-seeking, stupid pockets with the hard-earned cash of people who want to learn, advance knowledge, and do research. Assholes.
PPS: I mean really.
4 comments:
I agree that the prices charged by journals for access to academic research are outlandish. I think it's a perfect example of a business model which may have made some sense in the past, but which is totally crazy in the context of an internet-connected world. (I've always been sort of proud to be a member of the theoretical computer science community for this reason, because the culture strongly encourages the posting of all publications on one's personal website, free of charge, and in fact almost everyone does this.) It's hard to see how it will change unless a huge percentage of academic and research institutions team up and boycott the licensing fees, because no one wants to be the one place whose faculty and students can't get access to research materials.
I'd really like to see their response to this.
Hahaha.
This bit of old news seems relevant. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/07/reddit-founder-arrested-for-excessive-jstor-downloads.ars
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