From: "Hoon, Peggy" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2013 16:24:32 +0000

And again, the point is missed.  What do you think?  Librarians are caught
in a disintegrating mess of a system that was neither their making nor do
they have any truly effective means of influencing it other than educating
the faculty.  I repeat what  you all should know well: faculty, whose
minds conceive of the research in the first place (not the publisher),
obtain funding to conduct the research (not from the publisher) and
proceed to research in their labs and facilities provided to them, along
with a salary, benefits, retirement, etc. (also not from the publisher),
analyze their research and write up their results (without publisher
involvement), the results are peer reviewed (not by publishing staff) and
yet, the very last, and smallest contributor to the finished product, the
publisher, gets the golden Wonka bar.  Why?  Because the FACULTY give it
to them.  WHY do the faculty do this - give away their most precious and
hard-earned asset, their IP?  Because the publishers demand it.  Now what
is the most accurate word for that exchange? (fair and informed bargain? I
think not.  How about blackmail, would that come closer?  Shall we just
leap off the libelous diving board with the rest of the industry and call
it "steal"?  Behind the legal jargon, isn't that what it is?)

Did you notice the librarian in any of that workflow?  Nope.  The
librarian, is without much wiggle room.  The very faculty who engineered
this mess now insist that their librarian buy them back what they all
couldn't sign away fast enough. (and, by the way, the publishers have ZERO
product to sell without the faculty/research contributions. Nothing.  They
create nothing.)  But once it is "their IP, by heavens, woe be unto them,
including the hand that feeds them" should anything be used without the
pieces of silver being exchanged.  Librarians only have so much money to
spend and that's it.  If the unrelenting maw of publisher's fees didn't
utterly lay waste any increase a usually flat library budget might get,
the system might have trundled on forever.  That the pitchforks are raised
now is because no matter how much was sacrificed to the maw, it was and
will NEVER BE ENOUGH.  And while I'm at it, take your blood pressure
medicine and read a few hundred license agreements like I have for a
couple of decades nearly every single day.  If you find them reasonable
and acceptable, I would recommend that you immediately seek another line
of work and quit wasting your employer's money.  The entries that
suggested this bur-ha-ha might finally penetrate faculty consciousness
have grasped the most important take-away.

So don't challenge Chuck to "walk the walk" (who says that anymore?) and
cancel Elsevier.  You think that is a measure of his convictions?  Not
that simple, not by a long shot.

Peggy Hoon

--
Peggy E. Hoon, J.D.

Scholarly Communications Librarian
J. Murrey Atkins Library
University of North Carolina at Charlotte

phone: 704-687-5540
fax: 704-687-3050
[log in to unmask]



On 12/9/13 3:36 PM, "LIBLICENSE" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>From: Thomas Krichel <[log in to unmask]>
>Date: Sun, 8 Dec 2013 23:52:16 +0000
>
>Hamaker, Charles <[log in to unmask]> writes
>
>> Elsevier and its cynical relationship with authors and institutions,
>> has been demonstrated by Elsevier itself. No one could have done this
>> to them but themselves.
>>
>> The tide of OA, of authors making sure people who need to see it,
>> get to read their research, OA in all its guises, is inexorable and
>> if handled correctly even by such behemoths as Elsevier, will lift
>> all boats in the publishing stream, despite the scaremongers and
>> naysayers in publishing, or the mistaken advice of some in
>> libraries, or even among OA advocates themselves. It's logic is
>> persuasive, its goals commensurate ultimately with what authors want
>> for their own research. To put up and enforce barriers to what
>> scholars want to distribute that they themselves produce is
>> antediluvian.
>
>You talk the talk Charles. Will you now walk the walk and cancel
>your Elsevier subscriptions?
>
>Cheers,
>
>Thomas Krichel
>http://openlib.org/home/krichel