Paywall: The Business of Scholarship
Digital Tattoo Rating: 3/5
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5 |
It doesn’t worth the time |
The trailer is enough |
An informative movie |
Would give it to a friend |
A must see! |
Summary
As a student, I would expect that you have been stopped by a paywall at least once while trying to access a paper. Every time this has happened to me, my reaction was a mix of frustration and anger. I have never given much thought to the dynamics of the scholarly publishing business, until I came across the documentary Paywall: The Business of Scholarship.
The film, released in September of 2018, does a good job of imploring viewers to reflect about those dynamics and about the consequences of paywalls to academic production. It presents a series of short interview clips bringing the perspectives of about 60 researchers, librarians, and other experts on the multi million dollar business of scientific publishing. As they explain in their website, “staying true to the open access model,” the movie is available to stream and download under a CC BY 4.0 license.
The director and producer is Jason Schmitt, a journalist and filmmaker, and a professor at Clarkson University’s Department of Communication and Media, in Potsdam, New York. I interviewed him by email last month to understand his motivations and to discuss the film. “We all possess unique tools to help the dissemination of knowledge, and I thought this could be a small way I could contribute to the open access movement,” he said. You can find more of this interview and our highlights from the movie below. But first, check out the trailer:
The Top 5
1. Profit Margins
Right in the beginning of the movie, we are invited to reflect on how high the profit margins for the industry are – they reach around 35 per cent according to some of the interviewees. In comparison, the wealth management industry makes around 21 per cent, according to Karla Cosgriff, director for Free the Science Electrochemical Society.
“How is it okay for this industry to be making this profit while there are no inputs that they have to pay for?” she asks. The business’ dynamics includes editors that usually work as volunteers and writers that don’t receive any money.
On the consumers side, it’s intriguing that the readers are not the ones who usually pay to access the journals. The money comes from the universities, which often makes consumers “price insensitive” according to Stuart Shieber, a computer science professor at Harvard University. Consequently, the readers, which are usually academics and students, don’t feel the need to protest the high prices.
2. Role of Elsevier
The documentary concentrates its heavy criticism on Elsevier, the biggest player in the academic publishing business. In the interview with Digital Tattoo, Schmitt said that he kept the focus on the company because he believes they are “the biggest player in the discrepancies to knowledge on planet earth” and they have “a market that is unfair and monopolistic.”
In the movie, one of the few positive comments about Elsevier comes from Will Schweitzer, director of product and custom publishing for AAAS/Science. “I think they do a lot of good for supporting innovation and kind of cross-industry initiatives,” he said. Additionally, Schweitzer believes the company’s licensing practices have evolved in the past years.
3. Influences on the Scientific Production
What intrigued me the most was the negative impact of this business model on academic production. For instance, many researchers, particularly in developing countries, have their efforts restricted by the high prices to access some journals.
“Many authors think that if they publish in a conventional journal […] they’re reaching everybody who cares about their work. That’s false. They’re reaching everybody who is lucky enough to work at an institution that’s wealthy enough to subscribe to that journal,” said Peter Super, director of the Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication.
In addition, Brian Nosek, director of the Center for Open Society and professor at the University of Virginia, said that he met graduate students whose criteria to decide what to study wasn’t something that they were passionate about, but instead was a topic with an open literature.
4. Open Access as a Solution
The documentary provides a good space for exploring open access as a solution to the publishing model. It’s also presented as a way to democratize information and advance scientific knowledge. “The reason why we are having research is to try to solve problems in the world,” said Cable Green, director of open education for Creative Commons. To accomplish that, everybody has to have access, he argued.
To Digital Tattoo, Schmitt said that he believes we are very close to having open access as the default. For him, this model should be the standard. “Let’s allow high quality crowd curated glossy style content that has all the bells and whistles be the upgrade,” he said.
5. Cracking the Code
It’s clear from the movie that the system needs to change fast. Therefore, creative and bold solutions are very much needed. One example was the creation of the open journal Glossa by the Leiden University professor Joahna Rooryk. He was an editor for Elsevier’s Lingua when he decided it was time for change.
His innovation was to coordinate with the entire editorial board, so they all resigned and shifted together to Glossa. Subsequently, the new journal started with the same quality and credibility of the first one.
Final Thoughts
The documentary is very informative and makes us reflect on the importance of engaging in this discussion as consumers and producers of scientific knowledge. The current business model becomes particularly troubling if we think that the money for research frequently comes from public funds, but the products of this work are not publicly accessible.
However, it is important to have in mind that the movie can be interpreted as biased and activism-based. The film argues that Elsevier refused to answer their requests, but they could have given more space to people willing to explore the business’ improvements. Additionally, the documentary would be more balanced if the other players were also explored, such as Springer, Taylor & Francis and Wiley-Blackwell.
What do you think?
How do you see the scholarly publishing business as a student producing scientific knowledge? Have paywalls affected your studies somehow? Do you believe that we are close to have open access as the default system?
If you want to keep on exploring this topic, we have more resources for you! You can access our tutorials on Open Access and Open Learning.
Have you read any good books or watched any good movies related to digital identity? Are there any that you would like us to review? Join the conversation in the comments or on Facebook and Twitter!
Written by: Monique Rodrigues
Edited by: Elyse Hill
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