Elsevier and Its Business Model May Be Ageing Fast
July 13, 2015
If you need to conduct research and are not attached to a university or academic library, then you are going to get hit with huge subscription fees to have access to quality material. This is especially true for the scientific community, but on the Internet if there is a will there most certainly is a way. Material often locked behind a subscription service can be found if you dig around the Internet long enough, mostly from foreign countries, but the material is often pirated. Gizmodo shares in the article, “Academic Publishing Giant Fights To Keep Science Paywalled” that Elsevier, one of the largest academic publishers, is angry about its content being stolen and shared on third party sites. Elsevier recently filed a complaint with the New York District Court against Library Genesis and SciHub.org.
“The sites, which are both popular in developing countries like India and Indonesia, are a treasure trove of free pdf copies of research papers that typically cost an arm and a leg without a university library subscription. Most of the content on Libgen and SciHub was probably uploaded using borrowed or stolen student or faculty university credentials. Elsevier is hoping to shut both sites down and receive compensation for its losses, which could run in the millions.”
Gizmodo acknowledges Elsevier has a right to complain, but they also flip the argument in the other direction by pointing out that access to quality scientific research material is expensive. The article brings up Netflix’s entertainment offerings, with Netflix users pay a flat fee every month and have access to thousands of titles. Netflix remains popular because it remains cheap and the company openly acknowledges that it sets its prices to be competitive against piracy sites.
Publishers and authors should be compensated for their work and it is well known that academics do not rake in millions, but access to academic works should be less expensive. Following Netflix’s model or having a subscription service like Amazon Prime might be a better business model to follow.
Whitney Grace, July 13, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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