5 ms·

My "argument", if I was even making one, was that the cost to Elsevier to provide an API, is a tiny fraction of $40k/yr, and thus their business practices and m

by cubano 11y ago

My "argument", if I was even making one, was that the cost to Elsevier to provide an API, is a tiny fraction of $40k/yr, and thus their business practices and model is all about rent-seeking and not about saving peoples lives, which I personally find disgusting.

ikeboy 11y ago
If hypothetically, Amazon was making 80% margins on AWS, would that make them disgusting? Edit: note that Elsevier's margins are around 30-40%; I don't know if the particular API you wanted has higher margins.
- cubano 11y ago
  In general, no, unless of course they were using that margin in a way that endangered low-income people's health. I mean really...I can't believe I have to defend this position. There is obviously certain types of data that should be provided as a public service to all of society...is this even to be debated?
  - ikeboy 11y ago
    The example I gave above was where you needed the processing power to run your medical startup. >There is obviously certain types of data that should be provided as a public service to all of society "Should" what's meant by that? If you want data to be open, you need to fund that, or develop your own and release that freely. Statements of the kind "everyone deserves scarce resource X" really mean "we should tax rich people in order to subsidize X for poor people". Which is a fine thing to argue for, but don't present it as a universal right.
  - whiddershins 11y ago
    This. It is part of the fabric of scientific research that findings are shared. Science is overtly collaborative. Every scientists specifically builds on the knowledge of others, and shares what they discover with the world. Governments and a variety of organizations fund research with the express purpose of discovering new knowledge that ultimately benefits everyone. That's the WHOLE POINT of publishing a paper. At a fundamental level, scientific publishing is about trying to share the results of your research with the scientific community. The funding is tied to the act of publishing, having nothing to do with how people consume the papers. Charging people above cost to read the published research is antithetical to the whole idea of how the world does science.
- whiddershins 11y ago
  Fundamentally Elsevier's content is not funded or created by them. But they have a monopoly on it because most studies cannot be published in multiple places. In the case of AWS market forces could undercut their margins. That sort of copyright monopoly was granted by our legal system to encourage people to create intellectual property, but it is being twisted in this situation, as the creators are being funded by a mechanism completely irrelevant to Elsevier's costs. In this case what they are doing is more similar in a sense to patent trolls.
  - ikeboy 11y ago
    >Fundamentally Elsevier's content is not funded or created by them. They pay publication and editing costs, and in return get copyright signed over to them. >market forces could undercut their margins. And market forces can open new open access journals as well. To date, this hasn't solved it, perhaps because their margins weren't so high to begin with. >patent trolls Generally this refers to patents that should not have been issued, or that don't apply to the defending companies' product. It's not applicable here.
ig1 11y ago
You realize that an API fronting service like Mashery alone would cost them several hundred thousand dollars ? It's not something you hacked up in a weekend in your basement. It's something that requires project managers, business analysts, engineers, sales people, etc. These people require salaries, pensions, healthcare, etc. You can of course build a competitor if you think you can build something for a fraction of the cost.

by cubano 11y ago

ikeboy 11y ago

If hypothetically, Amazon was making 80% margins on AWS, would that make them disgusting? Edit: note that Elsevier's margins are around 30-40%; I don't know if the particular API you wanted has higher margins.

cubano 11y ago
In general, no, unless of course they were using that margin in a way that endangered low-income people's health. I mean really...I can't believe I have to defend this position. There is obviously certain types of data that should be provided as a public service to all of society...is this even to be debated?
- ikeboy 11y ago
  The example I gave above was where you needed the processing power to run your medical startup. >There is obviously certain types of data that should be provided as a public service to all of society "Should" what's meant by that? If you want data to be open, you need to fund that, or develop your own and release that freely. Statements of the kind "everyone deserves scarce resource X" really mean "we should tax rich people in order to subsidize X for poor people". Which is a fine thing to argue for, but don't present it as a universal right.
- whiddershins 11y ago
  This. It is part of the fabric of scientific research that findings are shared. Science is overtly collaborative. Every scientists specifically builds on the knowledge of others, and shares what they discover with the world. Governments and a variety of organizations fund research with the express purpose of discovering new knowledge that ultimately benefits everyone. That's the WHOLE POINT of publishing a paper. At a fundamental level, scientific publishing is about trying to share the results of your research with the scientific community. The funding is tied to the act of publishing, having nothing to do with how people consume the papers. Charging people above cost to read the published research is antithetical to the whole idea of how the world does science.
whiddershins 11y ago
Fundamentally Elsevier's content is not funded or created by them. But they have a monopoly on it because most studies cannot be published in multiple places. In the case of AWS market forces could undercut their margins. That sort of copyright monopoly was granted by our legal system to encourage people to create intellectual property, but it is being twisted in this situation, as the creators are being funded by a mechanism completely irrelevant to Elsevier's costs. In this case what they are doing is more similar in a sense to patent trolls.
- ikeboy 11y ago
  >Fundamentally Elsevier's content is not funded or created by them. They pay publication and editing costs, and in return get copyright signed over to them. >market forces could undercut their margins. And market forces can open new open access journals as well. To date, this hasn't solved it, perhaps because their margins weren't so high to begin with. >patent trolls Generally this refers to patents that should not have been issued, or that don't apply to the defending companies' product. It's not applicable here.

ig1 11y ago

You realize that an API fronting service like Mashery alone would cost them several hundred thousand dollars ? It's not something you hacked up in a weekend in your basement. It's something that requires project managers, business analysts, engineers, sales people, etc. These people require salaries, pensions, healthcare, etc. You can of course build a competitor if you think you can build something for a fraction of the cost.