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+--- Thread: Oh thats a shame.......... (/showthread.php?tid=4317)
Oh thats a shame.......... - kevin wooldridge - 14th February 2012
The Elektronische Zeitschriftenbibliothek is a site that BAJRites seeking access to E-journals might like to check out. http://rzblx1.uni-regensburg.de/ezeit/index.phtml?bibid=AAAAA&colors=7&lang=en
Here in Norway holders of a national library card are also able to access the University libraries free of charge. Don't quite understand (as the EZB site demonstrates) why access to data isn't an EU prerogative. I guess Little Englanders would somehow find reason to complain about such an initiative
Oh thats a shame.......... - AcademiaTrowl - 15th February 2012
Someone has to pay for the book/journals which are very expensive toproduce- even with the hundreds of free hours that many researchers andreviewers put into them. Increasingly grants will only cover research notpublication costs and will not pay subventions to publishers so the only way tofund publication is thought the sale of books/journal subscriptions – if youknow you are only guaranteed to sell 50 copies to libraries at ?50 each thatwill only give you ?2500 – less than half the production cost with a qualitypress. If you are doing commercial, for profit research like development fundedarchaeology why should you not pay for the research/access to books and cost itin to the project, it is better to pay a few quid at the point of access than hundredsat the point of publication. The reason why it is better - there is a move amongsome academic publishers to start new free content journals, and use these as away to diversify their income and change hundreds and hundreds of pounds topublish ok, but rejected, papers from premium journals - I am reliably told theslang term in the industry is ‘peer review light’. This is a cynical way toexploit people who are desperate to publish but means that the quality ofpublicly available information will fall. At the moment good papers by inexperiencedwriters are often accepted for publicationafter months of polishing and work, if this becomes widespread then premium journalswill be under pressure to only publish prestigious research (which does not meansit is any good).
Most journals list their content online, so the easy way to get hold ofrecent publications is to email the author, explain why your interested in thework, most are really helpful and will send you their digital off print or aprint copy in the post - authors are after all human and would like people tobe reading and researching their ideas and discoveries. Books and print copiesof journals you can interlibrary loan from any public library in the countryfor a few pounds. All you need to do is plan ahead and be prepared to wait.
Oh thats a shame.......... - Dinosaur - 15th February 2012
My main complaint above, having already paid over a huge amount of hard-earned in the first place to use the library, is the way they are removing existing hard-copy from the shelves (which are conspicuously left with empty shelves, in some cases for several years, just to rub it in) in favour of (to the likes of myself) inaccessible E-copies...how's that saving/generating income? - they're actually having to (a) employ someone to commit the deed, (b) subscribe to the E-version of something they already own, and © provide somewhere else to hide the original copies. The library in question has actually managed to completely lose the whole run of Britannia for instance - the paper copies and and catalogue references to same have been removed (but as usual they've left the big gap on the shelving), but someone seems to have forgotten to add the E-version to the library catalogue, so now no one has access to the journal! Idiocy!
Oh thats a shame.......... - Doug - 15th February 2012
http://www.openaccessarchaeology.org/
search engine, searchable database of journals by topics. If you are looking for open access this would be the place to start.
Oh thats a shame.......... - Oxbeast - 15th February 2012
We should be lobbying our old universities for JSTOR access as alumni. At the moment you have to have gone to the Universities of London, Exeter, Durham, SOAS or Aberdeen to get access. Or a load of american ones.
http://about.jstor.org/participate-jstor/libraries/alumni
Of course you probably have to agree not to use the access for anything commercial, like saving your company the commercial subscription.
Oh thats a shame.......... - loupiote - 15th February 2012
Ken Denham Wrote:Interesting, reminds me of an bloke I worked with a few years ago, a professional archaeologist, who firmly believed that there had been an advanced human civilisation before the Paleolithic which had destroyed itself with nuclear warfare. Made for some good pub chat.
Reminds me of a book by Ren? Barjavel: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ice_People_(Barjavel_novel)
It makes for an amazing novel, but not sure the author meant it as a scientific theory :p Apparently this story was inspired by a novel by H. Rider Haggard, who also liked to put wild theories in his novels but would (hopefully) have laughed them off in real life.
Oh thats a shame.......... - Welsh Andy - 15th February 2012
Not sure if I've linked to this already but the Archaeopop blog had a really good article on the subject of academic publishing last year.
http://archaeopop.blogspot.com/2011/12/academic-publishers-suicide-bombers.html
Quote:Like with so many other things that used to be public goods, academic knowledge (in the form of journal articles) has effectively been privatized in the last few decades. The ?big four? academic publishers have acquired rights to the articles you need to make it as a scholar, and have been jacking up prices steadily every year ? an average 8.5% increase between 1996 and 2004. For a reality check, see the Springer price list for 2012. Institutions pay an average of $2168/year for a Springer journal. For four issues! The humanities and social sciences are cheaper ? The Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, for instance, costs just $764. Anything to do with chemistry, mathematics, or medicine will set your library back $3250-6500. And what are the publishers? costs? Content is provided for free. Peer reviewers and editorial boards also work on the public dime to do quality control. You do need decent copy editors and some computers. (The posh office building in New York or London and multi-million dollar executive salaries, however, are perhaps not integral to scientific production).
Oh thats a shame.......... - gwyl - 16th February 2012
Oxbeast Wrote:We should be lobbying our old universities for JSTOR access as alumni. At the moment you have to have gone to the Universities of London, Exeter, Durham, SOAS or Aberdeen to get access. Or a load of american ones.
http://about.jstor.org/participate-jstor/libraries/alumni
Of course you probably have to agree not to use the access for anything commercial, like saving your company the commercial subscription.
although at ?177.96 to sign up, you need work to pay for it unless you've a private income, or work in The City or some such...
Oh thats a shame.......... - Oxbeast - 16th February 2012
I didn't check the links, sorry to hear that London is a rip off. And it has such a reputation for value for money! Exeter are offering this to their alumni for free. They would probably spam you forever though. I'd use this if my alma matae signed up and it was free, but not if it was ?177.
Oh thats a shame.......... - AcademiaTrowl - 16th February 2012
Individual articals from journals are not priced for personal users, most papers are purchased once, or twice, ever. Personal subscription to journals through publishers are also significantly rarer that you might think. Articals are priced to mean that it is not cheaper for the library to just buy the articals individualy but to allow alternate access. Although it is true that publishers make money the margins are not that good and the big societies, who still own their journals, command massive fees. Indeed, many academic editors - including some in archaeology - Get payed for their editing, and this can be substantual ammounts of money on top of their salary.
Publishers don't even consider individual users as relevent so prices are based on what they belive libraries can pay. Don't buy into this system, if you want a paper email the author or interlibrary loan it from the British library. Alternativly SoA subscribe to may journals so joining can prove cost effective. Equally journal publishers have not considered commercial bussness as a means of generating income and they know they can't get more from libraries. So maybe clever contractors can negociate ocassional use subscriptions for less than librar rates.