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