5 ms·

The real issue for the publishers isn't a few people on the web linking to archived versions of papers published in their journals, it's when major institutions

The real issue for the publishers isn't a few people on the web linking to archived versions of papers published in their journals, it's when major institutions start dropping subscriptions, which likely add up to tens of thousands of dollars per publisher per university. Any decent research institution's library will have archived paper copies of journals bound into books dating back 100 years or more, and that's basically the model for the future as well. Going 100% digital isn't such a great idea, due to bitrot and so on, it's still best to have paper archives stored somewhere. Then, someone has to pay for the print runs on real paper, the work of organizing and publishing each issue, etc. So, how much does that cost per issue, what's the average size of a print run, how many staff have to be paid full time to keep the journals coming off the presses, what kind of profit margins are the publishers extracting from the copyrights, etc., how much do those glossy images on high-quality paper suitable for archiving for decades really cost, etc. The overall benefits to human civilization of having all the information in research articles available to anyone with a terminal, however, that seems to outweight the other considerations. Maybe some kind of state-subsidized publication system is the answer? It's hardly a competitive market after all.

Ultimatt 4y ago
This is what national copyright libraries are for. Universities shouldn't all be keeping archival copies. About the only thing they should have bound is their local PhD research which is rarely "published" but frequently hidden gems.
hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
Bitrot? You talk as if it’s an unsolveable problem..
- foobarbecue 4y ago
  Indeed. Store it all on some high-to-low blu-ray, and the media is good for 10000 years. Way less rot than paper.
  - UncleMeat 4y ago
    Until you don't have a machine that can easily read that media. I thought a bit like this until I married a historian and learned a bit more about how archives work. I assumed that digitizing everything would be a huge boon for the maintainability of the archive. But after now speaking with a bunch of archivists it seems like digital archives have a lot more problems than I originally expected and are way more underfunded than I expected.
    - hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
      The ability to read 1’s and 0’s will be around in 1000 years time. It will be easier to convert bluray to some new format when bluray reaches end of life. Bet you could find vhs schematics, if you couldn’t find an active vhs digitiser right now if you tried.
      - UncleMeat 4y ago
        Will it? Will there be companies that make optical disk readers? Because it isn't enough to just say "well, they could read it." Chronically underfunded archivists need to be able to do it.
        hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
        Do you honestly believe that bluray players will suddenly become unobtainable without people migrating to a more superior format first? Hard copies are vulnerable to literal rot, natural disaster, unintentional or intentional destruction, etc. Sotrage is measured in gigabytes or terabytes, where a single gigabyte would be sufficient to archive most medium sized libraries. If you truly think that hard copies are less likely to last 1000 years (assuming redundancy / tech rollover) over soft copies, you lack a complete grasp on technology.
        UncleMeat 4y ago
        I used to believe what you believe. It seemed ridiculous that any other thing was possible. Then I spoke to an unusually large number of professional archivists who believe that given their limited funding digitization as a storage medium rather than a distribution method for a subset of the archive has very serious problems. Paper is actually remarkably resilient. This isn't a question of technology. This is a question of archives, funding, and businesses.
yummypaint 4y ago
Many academic libraries have thrown out their bound periodicals in favor of JSTOR. This is often because of space constraints and building costs, so it's ultimately up to school administrators who would rather the library just pay a subscription than maintain their own infrastructure. On a somewhat related note, small college libraries are utterly abused by journal subscription costs, but it actually varies significantly by discipline. The American Chemical Society is notorious for strong arming libraries into paying unreasonably high sums, and some library directors think of them more as racketeering syndicate than a professional organizarion whose purpose is ostensibly to help chemists. The odd thing is that american physical society journals are much cheaper, and many are open access (which the APS pioneered), plus there is ArXiV where everyone posts their preprints publicly. Physics research is no less costly to publish than chem research, so the difference must boil down to culture and/or incentive structures with these organizations. If one group believes that knowledge should be given freely, and another believes knowledge is a product worth whatever people are willing to pay, they will come up with different systems. My point is that there are alot of wrinkles to the problem, and many avenues of possible attack. Personally i think if we could get all disciplines on the same page as the APS, we would be more than halfway there. Edit: it looks like the ACS has softened its position on posting preprints!
- chazeon 4y ago
  I wonder if there is a comparison between APS and ACS, the authors don’t mention APS in the article.
PeterisP 4y ago
I don't need my university's subscription for the 100 years of archived copies of journals, I need it so that I have immediate, low-friction access to the full versions of papers published last week (which otherwise would be behind the publishers' paywall) - and which probably never ever existed or will exist in paper form, as many respectable publication sources nowadays are digital-only.

Ultimatt 4y ago

This is what national copyright libraries are for. Universities shouldn't all be keeping archival copies. About the only thing they should have bound is their local PhD research which is rarely "published" but frequently hidden gems.

hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago

Bitrot? You talk as if it’s an unsolveable problem..

foobarbecue 4y ago
Indeed. Store it all on some high-to-low blu-ray, and the media is good for 10000 years. Way less rot than paper.
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  Until you don't have a machine that can easily read that media. I thought a bit like this until I married a historian and learned a bit more about how archives work. I assumed that digitizing everything would be a huge boon for the maintainability of the archive. But after now speaking with a bunch of archivists it seems like digital archives have a lot more problems than I originally expected and are way more underfunded than I expected.
  - hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
    The ability to read 1’s and 0’s will be around in 1000 years time. It will be easier to convert bluray to some new format when bluray reaches end of life. Bet you could find vhs schematics, if you couldn’t find an active vhs digitiser right now if you tried.
    - UncleMeat 4y ago
      Will it? Will there be companies that make optical disk readers? Because it isn't enough to just say "well, they could read it." Chronically underfunded archivists need to be able to do it.
      - hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
        Do you honestly believe that bluray players will suddenly become unobtainable without people migrating to a more superior format first? Hard copies are vulnerable to literal rot, natural disaster, unintentional or intentional destruction, etc. Sotrage is measured in gigabytes or terabytes, where a single gigabyte would be sufficient to archive most medium sized libraries. If you truly think that hard copies are less likely to last 1000 years (assuming redundancy / tech rollover) over soft copies, you lack a complete grasp on technology.
        UncleMeat 4y ago
        I used to believe what you believe. It seemed ridiculous that any other thing was possible. Then I spoke to an unusually large number of professional archivists who believe that given their limited funding digitization as a storage medium rather than a distribution method for a subset of the archive has very serious problems. Paper is actually remarkably resilient. This isn't a question of technology. This is a question of archives, funding, and businesses.

yummypaint 4y ago

Many academic libraries have thrown out their bound periodicals in favor of JSTOR. This is often because of space constraints and building costs, so it's ultimately up to school administrators who would rather the library just pay a subscription than maintain their own infrastructure. On a somewhat related note, small college libraries are utterly abused by journal subscription costs, but it actually varies significantly by discipline. The American Chemical Society is notorious for strong arming libraries into paying unreasonably high sums, and some library directors think of them more as racketeering syndicate than a professional organizarion whose purpose is ostensibly to help chemists. The odd thing is that american physical society journals are much cheaper, and many are open access (which the APS pioneered), plus there is ArXiV where everyone posts their preprints publicly. Physics research is no less costly to publish than chem research, so the difference must boil down to culture and/or incentive structures with these organizations. If one group believes that knowledge should be given freely, and another believes knowledge is a product worth whatever people are willing to pay, they will come up with different systems. My point is that there are alot of wrinkles to the problem, and many avenues of possible attack. Personally i think if we could get all disciplines on the same page as the APS, we would be more than halfway there. Edit: it looks like the ACS has softened its position on posting preprints!

chazeon 4y ago
I wonder if there is a comparison between APS and ACS, the authors don’t mention APS in the article.

PeterisP 4y ago

I don't need my university's subscription for the 100 years of archived copies of journals, I need it so that I have immediate, low-friction access to the full versions of papers published last week (which otherwise would be behind the publishers' paywall) - and which probably never ever existed or will exist in paper form, as many respectable publication sources nowadays are digital-only.