The newspaper is dying, shouting about "responsible publishers" and "conscientious advertisers" doesn't change a thing

It's an old joke that the point of journalism is to fill in the gaps between the adverts. And there has always been a tension, sometimes even a conflict, between the newsroom and the ad sales teams that mostly pay the wages of those journalists. Every paper will have a story of how an advertiser pulled copy because of a story, every editor will have witnessed a raging red-faced sales director screaming how that 'scoop' meant that he's lost thousands in sales - "I was that close to a long-term deal" the SD will shout while the editor waffles about journalistic integrity.

Journalists don't like advertising despite (or maybe because of) working in a business that's dependent on those ads for its existence. Journalists also don't like competition for that advertising (especially from things they don't consider to be media let alone journalism). Here in a classic of self-importance is James Mitchinson, the editor of struggling newspaper, The Yorkshire Post:

"I have long been convinced that the indiscriminate nature of the programmatic advertising business model makes it vulnerable to exploitation. It has caused a race to the bottom, with some publishers – not all – and editors gaming the business model with their commissioning decisions, rather than thinking about what is in the public interest."

There are some suppositions here that are worth noting. We get an attack on the advertising business model and Mitcheson talks about "...outlets that seek to commoditise audiences in order to exploit an indiscriminate paymaster..." on the presumption that advertising decisions are in any way indiscriminate when any ad man will tell you that the opposite is true. And it's hard to accept without a wry smile the suggestion that "quality" newspapers just do "honest journalism" and haven't ever been bottom feeders.

We get the sense in Mitchinson's comments, the use of terms like "conscientious advertisers" and "responsible publishers", that he seeks to divide publishing into good and bad - we can see some of his targets clearly in this part of the commentary: "...the hateful, partisan, agenda-driven Goliaths who think nothing of demonising immigrants, legitimising domestic abuse and scandalising the courts...". But who is Mitcheson, or even a "responsible publishers' network", to say what content the public should or shouldn't consume? And why, since Mitchinson thinks the power is in their hands, should advertisers trash their marketing models to suit what a group of essentially self-interested publishers decide is "responsible" or "conscientious"?

What Mitchinson, and so many others, fail to realise is this journalism they lay claim to ("...public interest journalism; journalism done for the betterment of the communities it serves...") only exists so long as people - directly or through advertising choices - continue to consume the product, the content, those editors put before them. And, right now, the eyes of the majority are turned away from local papers like the Yorkshire Post because it offers little they want. Even those "agenda-driven Goliaths" that Mitcheson hates so much are losing customers, struggling to keep advertisers and wondering how much longer their business model ('producing content to get people to see the advertisements') can continue.

It's unclear, other than seeking to create what in other business contexts would be an illegal cartel, what Mitcheson wants to achieve. We hear of "public interest" (as if that's something that can be defined glibly by a bunch of newspaper editors) and "editorial principles" (as if editorial strategies should should ignore economics) but the telling comment lies at the end: "...improve the whole of the internet and make a wholesome contribution to society."

Mitcheson, like most of the traditional media, is fearful of how platforms like Facebook and Google have changed the way in which people consume news (plus, of course, how the advertisers have shifted spending from black and white copy in the Yorkshire Post to animated and engaging promotions online). To counter this, the fearful journalists have created a bogeyman built from fake news, targeted advertising and "toxic" content which they wave at each other, at the government and at the public in the manner of an old fire-and-brimstone preacher threatening his elderly, half-asleep congregation with eternal damnation.

Dying industries, and traditional, especially local, news journalism is a dying industry (and has been for at least two decades), always look to cartels, regulation and the heavy hand of government to protect then in their dotage. This doesn't better the "...communities it serves and therefore society as a whole..." but is seeking moral enforcement in the cause of economic interest, the very thing Mitcheson claims his crusade is directed against. The problem is that this strategy, while it might stave off the last day, doesn't begin to resolve the problem with the regional paper business model. The Yorkshire Post is neither fish nor fowl - not a local paper and not a national paper - has a daily circulation not much over 10,000, and competes for advertising with national and local competitotrs as well as with other advertising platforms such as Facebook and YouTube (or the advertisers own carefully curated website promoted via Google).

Mitcheson wants advertisers to deliberately buy less impactful and effective advertising so as to privilege his particular view of "responsible" journalism but completely fails to make a case beyond the purely emotive "I want to help make the change; protect quality journalism; improve the whole of the internet and make a wholesome contribution to society". It's not for Mitcheson and a few mates to define quality journalism, dictate what is or isn't good on the Internet, or what constitutes wholesomeness in society.

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Maybe writing stuff people want to read would be a start?

Literary fiction - those celebrated but unread books that all the chattering folk recommend to each other - is struggling:

Finally it’s official: literary fiction is in crisis, and writers across the land are burning the midnight oil in their garrets, teaching or slogging away in unrelated jobs to keep the fire ablaze in the grate. This Dickensian picture was revealed by Arts Council England today in a report that suggests it may have to shift its funding priorities in order to save a population whose economic and cultural solvency has been chipped away over the years.

We're told (although there's no actual evidence presented) that publishers used to be lovely sorts who allowed authors advances that didn't "earn out" because of "literary value that could be offset against the profits of more pragmatic publishing". And we're also told that there's no let up in us buying and reading books - we're just not buying 'literary fiction'.

Apparently though, saying things like 'try writing stuff that people want to read' isn't the right response - we should instead be subsidising publishers so those penning angst-ridden novels filled with meaningful dialogue and incisive social commentary can carry on doing so despite the fact that only a few close friends opt to read the books.

In the end there is a huge gulf between what people read and the endless self-referencing of the literary fiction advocates. Here's Neal Stephenson - an author, a very good author, who writes some of that terrible 'genre fiction' so disdained by the literary cognoscenti (and The Guardian's Associate Editor, Culture):

I went to a writers' conference. I was making chitchat with another writer, a critically acclaimed literary novelist who taught at a university. She had never heard of me. After we'd exchanged a bit of of small talk, she asked me "And where do you teach?" just as naturally as one Slashdotter would ask another "And which distro do you use?"

I was taken aback. "I don't teach anywhere," I said.

Her turn to be taken aback. "Then what do you do?"

"I'm...a writer," I said. Which admittedly was a stupid thing to say, since she already knew that.

"Yes, but what do you do?"

I couldn't think of how to answer the question---I'd already answered it!

"You can't make a living out of being a writer, so how do you make money?" she tried.

"From...being a writer," I stammered.

Yay for science fiction!

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Philip Pullman wants to make more money - at book buyers expense

Writing books is a competitive business. There are uncountable aspiring novelists scribbling away at their masterwork while scraping a living in some dead end job (or so it seems). Even people who have completed a book and got the precious thing published soon find out that, after the initial buzz of giving your mum a copy, the reality of book sales is that most books...er...don't sell:

I went through the BookScan numbers for every fiction book listed on the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2014. I used 2014 instead of 2015 to make sure each book had at least 12 months of sales. No list is perfect, but the NYT list includes story collections and small press books alongside the big name literary authors and award contenders. 2014’s list includes names like Haruki Murakami, Lydia Davis, Marlon James, and David Mitchell as well as small press debuts by Nell Zink and Eimear McBride. It’s a good sampling of the “books that people are talking about” in the literary world.

The BookScan sales of those books literally ranged from 1,000 to 1.5 million, with an average (mean) of just over 75,000 copies sold per book. That 75k number is pretty skewed by the existence of Anthony Doerr’s runaway literary hit, All the Light We Cannot See, which sold over 1.5 millions of copies. (The next highest book was about 270,000.) If we remove the best and worst selling books on the list, we get a mean of 46,550 copies and a median of 25,000 copies.

These are the big books, the ones raved over by critics, featured in brainy magazine 'what you should read this summer' lists and chewed over on late night TV shows. So what does all this mean? You've guessed it - authors can't earn a living:

According to a survey of almost 2,500 working writers – the first comprehensive study of author earnings in the UK since 2005 – the median income of the professional author in 2013 was just £11,000, a drop of 29% since 2005 when the figure was £12,330 (£15,450 if adjusted for inflation), and well below the £16,850 figure the Joseph Rowntree Foundation says is needed to achieve a minimum standard of living. The typical median income of all writers was even less: £4,000 in 2013, compared to £5,012 in real terms in 2005, and £8,810 in 2000.

The result is that even those acclaimed, much-feted writers we see talked about in The Guardian and TLS have to have some other form of income. Here's Neal Stephenson (who does make a living from writing) on the issue:

I went to a writers' conference. I was making chitchat with another writer, a critically acclaimed literary novelist who taught at a university. She had never heard of me. After we'd exchanged a bit of of small talk, she asked me "And where do you teach?" just as naturally as one Slashdotter would ask another "And which distro do you use?"

I was taken aback. "I don't teach anywhere," I said.

Her turn to be taken aback. "Then what do you do?"

"I'm...a writer," I said. Which admittedly was a stupid thing to say, since she already knew that.

"Yes, but what do you do?"

I couldn't think of how to answer the question---I'd already answered it!

"You can't make a living out of being a writer, so how do you make money?" she tried.

"From...being a writer," I stammered.

Now Stephenson was using this anecdote to explore the different way in which genre writers like him are treated compared to writers of literary fiction but it's a useful reminder that, without patronage, literature struggles. And for most writers - the ones like the writer Stephenson talked to - their income from writing is nice but not central to survival. Earning £11,000 is very nice bunce when you've £45,000 of tenured academic earnings.

All of which brings me to the Society of Authors - chaired by Philip Pullman (another successful genre writer) - and their complaining about discounting and bulk deals:

“I don’t like it when I see my books sold cheaply,” Pullman said. “But I’d like to think I’m speaking on behalf of all authors who are caught in this trap. It’s easy to think that readers gain a great deal by being able to buy books cheaply. But if a price is unrealistically cheap, it can damage the author’s reputation (or brand, as we say now), and lead to the impression that books are a cheap commodity and reading is an experience that’s not worth very much.”

This seems to me like a pretty crass argument designed entirely to protect the earnings of successful authors (and as an side effect the profits of publishers) rather than anything that will expand the market for literature. It essentially looks like people like Pullman - and Chocolat author, Joanne Harris (also quoted in the article) - are sticking two fingers up at book buyers in the interests of them making bigger royalties from their assured sales.

Going back to Neal Stephenson, we are reminded that it will still be patronage (in so far as a tenured academic position in creative writing or a writer in residence position can be called patronage) that drives literary fiction rather than gross sales. Cheaper books mean more people buy books, more people read books and the social value of literature is enhanced.

There's a sort of arrogance to Pullman's argument that something only has value if it is more expensive - for someone railing against 'market fundamentalism' it is doubly ridiculous as that 'price of everything, value of nothing' approach is usually directed at market fundamentalists! In the end the Society of Authors just want to fix the market for their members to make more money. And if books are more expensive we'll buy fewer of them - we'll buy Pullman's and Harris's latest but probably not the work of some new author we've not heard of.

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The Booker Prize isn't as important as a lot of folk think

Tim Worstall reports on a lefty professor's comments about the Booker Prize:

The Booker now has a stranglehold on how people think of, read, and value books in Britain. It has no serious critics. Those who berate its decisions about individual awardees (James Kelman’s prize back in 1994 prompted one judge to say it was “frankly, crap”) ritually add to its allure.

Thing is that, if we look at book sales in the UK, the Booker Prize is marginal at best. I remember reading a tale from SF writer Neal Stephenson where he talked about being at a literary event with a well-regarded writer of literary fiction. From memory it went something like this:

Writer: "So what do you do for a living?"

Stephenson: "I write"

It continued in the vein because the writer (a tenured professor at a good university) couldn't get to grips with the fact that Stephenson earned a very good living writing science fiction - indeed the Baroque Trilogy is one of the very best ever science fiction trilogies. All the writers this person knew had another job, most usually in or associated with a place of learning.

We need to remember that over half of book sales are children's books and non-fiction while 60% or more of adult fition sales are genre (crime, romance, fantast, science fiction, historical).

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Fake news tells us why scholarly publishing profits matter

It has been a bugbear of the increasingly left-wing word of academia that their work is published in paid-for scholarly journals resulting is successful businesses making significant profits (and employing thousands of clever products of those universities into the bargain). They say stuff like this:

It is easy at a high level to think about how knowledge could be unbundled, but once a framework is developed, then graduate students who were learning and reading past knowledge would be encouraged to translate their own information into the new framework. The knowledge could be freed from the bounds of journals without undermining all the curation and attribution work that goes with them. And at the same time, a searchable database that is open by design would exist not for articles, pages, or PDFs, but for the knowledge itself.

And my response is: yeah, and which bit of the fake news story sloshing around after Trump's election did you not understand? You need publishers and their journals because they provide assurance, a guarantee that the stuff therein isn't simply rubbish. And because this matters - indeed is absolutely central to the idea of academia - you want to make sure those publishers aren't tempted by fakery. So you let them earn their profits.

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Tim Worstall (and nearly everyone else) is wrong about open access publishing

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I get it that Tim Worstall as an independent researcher is on the sore end of the historically dominant publishing business model. To remind you, this model is where the authors of research get published for nothing, get paid nothing and the publisher flogs the journals back to academic libraries for expensive subscriptions. Hence this what Tim is celebrating:

Knowledge is a public good, such research papers are meant to be read to spread it and almost all of the research was tax funded to boot. It does seem odd there’s a there’s a few gatekeepers waxing fat off the journals.

Now I'm not going to get into the economics of all this so won't be asking whether or not knowledge is a public good. However, it is moot whether what we buy from academic publishers is knowledge per se or whether what we're buying is the publishing process. After all there's absolutely nothing to stop researchers doing what Tim does and just plonk their work on a free to air blog. There won't be any peer review, it'll be hard to find and it is tricky to protect against copying or plagiarism but authors can do this right now without restriction.

Unless they choose to submit is to a recognised journal so as to secure the peer review, the editing, the abstracting, the writing of key words, the indexing, the dissemination and the guarantee that the work will be seen alongside other similar work with the assurance of quality. Plus - since the copyright has transferred to the publisher - the assurance that copying and plagiarism will meet with a robust response. Under the terms (they vary from publisher to publisher, these are Elsevier's) the author will be able to:

Share their article for Personal Use, Internal Institutional Use and Scholarly Sharing purposes, with a DOI link to the version of record on ScienceDirect (and with the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC- ND license for author manuscript versions)

This means the author can but a copy onto a personal site, can use the article in teaching, can share the work with other researchers and can put the article into an institutional repository. All of which uses are open and sit outside the article cost or journal subscription. Nearly everyone who wants or needs to view the research can do so. Indeed, for credentialed science journalists the big publishers mostly give free access to published research and nearly all research is free to air within six months to a year following initial publication (in Elsevier's case this extends to post-docs not in academia).

So wholesale theft aside, what's the alternative to this model? This is what's called open access and, far from being free, it replaces subscriber pays with author pays. And, because the authors of articles in academic journals are academics, they aren't about to start paying personally for something they've had for free up till now. So the 'author pays' is, in reality, 'author's institution pays' or 'author's funder pays'. All we have done is to shift the cost from the library budget to the faculty budget and research budget. And the cost is anything up to £3,000 per article (depending on the particular journal) so it's not really accessible to the independent researcher in the way the old system was accessible.

The bigger problems with open access publishing, however, relate to who gets published and the quality of the published work. Firstly, the control of publishing shifts from the editorial boards and academic peers to either the institution or the funder (most typically a government body or a private corporation). An academic can only get published what his institution is prepared to pay for since they have to stump up the three grand to pay the publisher for the privilege. We move from the system where the gatekeeper is the publisher to one where, overwhelmingly, it is the government or an institution dependent on the government for its funding, authority and existence.

The second issue is one of quality - here's Beale's List:

This is a list of questionable, scholarly open-access publishers. We recommend that scholars read the available reviews, assessments and descriptions provided here, and then decide for themselves whether they want to submit articles, serve as editors or on editorial boards.

The worst of these publishers are indistinguishable from a vanity publisher - except that they're exploiting institutional budgets rather than a personal, individual wish to be published. Other simply play fast and loose with the peer review process, with systems for citation and loopholes within the infrastructure around open access publishing. Also, given the way in which people (and especially non-academic people) search, there is a big risk that poor quality, under-reviewed research is given the same credence as high quality, fully reviewed research.

Here from one publisher is an example:

You may suggest information of some particularly qualified reviewers who have had experience in the subject of the submitted manuscript, but who are not affiliated with the same institutes as the contributor.

And

You may also submit a list of reviewers to be excluded.

There's nothing wrong with open access systems but we need to understand that this isn't about whether knowledge is a public good but rather about whether the value added by the publishing process - however it's paid for - is worth the price. The simple 'research should be free to everyone' argument is essentially identical to the 'free access to medicine' argument - it may be right, even a good idea but it certainly isn't free. Which is why Tim Worstall - and many others banging on about open access and 'free knowledge' - are wrong.

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The Spectator. A great magazine that's cannibalising it's income for the sake of online hits.

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For a good number of years I've subscribed to The Spectator. It was and still is the best by far of the UK's political and cultural magazines - even though it's arts coverage does has a tendency to disappear up its own London-centric arse.

This evening, after dinner, my wife was reading this weeks issue and exclaimed:

"Why do we pay for a subscription when I've seen most of the articles already online? And not just the main headline articles but little ones."

It has struck me for some while that the search for currency is getting ahead of the desire for subscriptions. What The Spectator is doing by focusing its attention online is treating paying customers like my wife and I with a degree of contempt. We pay what John Major would call 'a not inconsiderable amount of money' to receive the magazine on our doormat every week. But now I can see most of what I want to see without the need to spend that money.

In times past the arrival of The Spectator was an event - not a huge event but still something anticipated and enjoyed. It would prompt a break from whatever I was doing to open the magazine and see what interesting stuff had be gathered together for my pleasure by the editor and his staff. I might brew up a pot of tea or even have a bath so as to create a space and some time to savour the magazine's insights.

Now I open the magazine and look at the articles and, like the frog with the library books, exclaim 'reddit, reddit, reddit'. The reasons for subscription gradually diminish to the point whereas they're merely a combination of inertia and misplaced loyalty (the magazine barely knows where Bradford is, let alone Cullingworth).

So, unless I get a privileged access to content I pay for, I'm very unlikely to renew my subscription.

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So what is the point of peer review then? Bias and the European Journal of Public Health

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Richard Grant reports that the European Journal of Public Health (EJPH) has become the latest academic publication refusing to publish research that is wholly or partly funded by the tobacco industry. As Richard points out, the publication is, in essence, admitting that the peer review process doesn't work.

By banning research funded by one particular industry the Journal is demonstrating that its review process it is not just the research that is assessed but the author or the funder of the research. And that the Journal is not confident that its reviewers will be able to spot research from tobacco-funded sources in a blind review. The journal doesn't operate a blind review process that would give greater assurance of research quality and reduce risk of reviewer bias.

This indicates that either the tobacco-funded research is mostly sound or else that the carefully selected reviewers for the Journal are not competent (I guess it could indicate both of these things too).  If it is the latter then perhaps the editor and managing editors need to improve the editorial board (it is listed here although the specialisms and institutions of its members aren't clear).

It seems that the Journal, rather than operating a proper peer review system aimed as ensuring quality is instead through an 'open' process effectively institutionalising confirmation bias. As an independent outsider, I find this quite disturbing - the editorial board is effectively positioning itself to refuse any research (however funded) that challenges the board's ideology. I do not need to read every article published in EJPH (or indeed any of them) to know that what is published is selected, partial and probably biased.

In one respect this doesn't matter a jot. The Journal is a private institution published by another private institution. However, because its pronouncements on public health are given weight in the wider world, the fact that we cannot be confident of its objectivity makes it dangerous. And the decision to exclude research on the basis of its funder alone (regardless of the validity or quality of that research) illustrates why I am right to be concerned.

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Transition Network - smug folk who want higher prices

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There's a particular sort - I call them 'local protectionists' - who think the salvation for poor communities, indeed for our economy, is for prices to be higher. That's right folks - there really are people out there who believe poverty will be resolved, sustainability achieved and resiliance maintained by stuff being more expensive.

I've written about Transition Towns before pointing out that they don't do what they claim at all (assuming 'helping the poor' is part of the point) but actively make life worse for the least well off in the communities they colonise.

Their nonsense - dangerous, divisive, damaging nonsense - is encapsulated in this smug post from Rob Hopkins, the daddy of Transition Towns and ruiner of Totnes. The post catalogues Rob's little adventure closing down his Amazon account:

I've done it.  I've closed my Amazon account.  I now stand before you as an ex-Amazon account-holder.  I feel curiously shaky, but at the same time empowered, excited even.

It's OK, the blog calms down a little as Rob explains all about how evil Amazon is as a business and how he not only wanted to close the account but wanted his reasons ('I don't like how you do business') to be registered. Perhaps even tattooed on Jeff Bezos' backside.

And Rob then concludes with a call for higher prices:

Me, I resolve to buy less, but better. Less, but longer-lasting. Less, but local. The thought of where we will end up in 5 years time, 10 years time, 20 years time, if companies like Amazon continue as they are, really frightens me. It's not good, it's not right. It's not about our needs, it's about the needs of huge investors. I want a different world for my boys. I can't, on my own, do that much about it. I can't insist that the UK government legislate so that, as in Holland, the Recommended Retail Price (RRP) is the legal minimum at which any book can be sold, although I think that is grounds for a really timely campaign. 

We used to have price fixing for books. Publishers loved it. And books were more expensive (lots more expensive). This smug bloke wants those prices to be higher - for rules to passed to make this so. And for all of us to be less well off.


Dreadful.

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Possible predatory open-access publishing and public health...

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A couple of days ago I wrote about a piece of research published in a journal called "Food & Public Health" and written by authors including one Dr Ricardo Costa from Coventry University. I commented:

Nothing in the research suggests that Jamie, Nigella and Delia are making us all obese with their glorious culinary temptations. The authors however make a huge leap from these temptations to suggest that these wicked TV chefs are affecting our food preparation habits (again without any evidence) and that they are, as a result:

...a likely hidden contributing factor to Britain’s obesity epidemic and its associated public health issues.

Yesterday, while talking with Cullingworth's resident academic publishing guru, I mentioned that "Food & Public Health" was an open access publication. Kathryn's response was to wonder whether this journal - an its publisher - was on Jeffrey Beall's list of  "Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers". I'd never heard of this list but it's a consequence of the open access publishing model:

This is a list of questionable, scholarly open-access publishers. We recommend that scholars read the available reviews, assessments and descriptions provided here, and then decide for themselves whether they want to submit articles, serve as editors or on editorial boards. 

Beale (who is an American academic librarian) provides a comprehensive list of the criteria he uses to determine whether the publisher or journal is included on his list.

"Food & Public Health" is published by Scientific & Academic Publishing, a publisher that is included on Jeff Beall's list. To indicate part of the problem check out the guidance to authors on review:

You may suggest information of some particularly qualified reviewers who have had experience in the subject of the submitted manuscript, but who are not affiliated with the same institutes as the contributor.

So in effect you can certainly influence - and maybe even pick who'll review your paper. But it gets better:

You may also submit a list of reviewers to be excluded. 

So any academic who might disagree can be excluded from the review process - hard to see how this is open and transparent publishing. Letting authors direct or influence review is, quite simply, a recipe for bad science, ideological capture of academic disciplines and the exclusion of challenge. Precisely the problem we see with public health.

What we can't determine from the publisher website is the publication fee - remember that in an open access academic publishing model the cost of publishing shifts from user (or user's institution) to author (or author's institution). The typical open access charge is $3000 to publish an article so we can assume that Dr Costa - or Coventry University or the Heart of England NHS Foundation trust - paid a charge of this sort to have the article published.

What some predatory open access publishers do (although we don't know this is the case for Scientific & Academic Publishing) is, in effect, spam academics to get material for publishing. This takes advantage of pressures to publish, especially for academics in less well-known institutions. Worse still, the journalist (say at the Independent) probably can't distinguish between this sort of predatory publishing process and processes of higher quality. With the result that ideological and weak articles such as Dr Costa's get the same credence as articles in established subscription publications - to that journalist it's all "academic publishing".

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Leveson mission creep - a warning to voluntary organisations

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Folk like me (I think but am not quite sure) are not caught in the mission creep that is the proposed Royal Charter to control the press - at least as solo bloggers. But if - like I do - you are involved in managing a site that publishes news, blogs, events information and other stories, then take note of this:

The result is that they apply to any size of web publisher – if there’s more than one author, the content is edited and there’s a business involved, then you must join a self regulator.

And don't think that you can hide behind being a charity. Remember also that the proposals are for strict liability.

The Open Rights Group have set up a link for you to raise your concerns with Party leaders and your MP. You should - however much you welcome the broad Leveson principles - consider carefully whether the proposed Charter will encompass your organisation and whether you think that is right.

Update: Lord Lucas is sponsoring an amendment that will exclude smaller organisations and individuals from the proposed regulations:

Insert into New Schedule 5 of the Crime and Courts Bill ‘Exclusions from definition of “relevant publisher”
9) “A publisher who does not exceed the definition of a small or medium-sized enterprise as defined in Section 382 and 465 Companies Act 2006.”

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Open Access: It's not free you know - not even a little bit...

The Internet I mean. Yet that's what people persist in believing - and worse that somehow forcing it all to be 'free' (it isn't free by the way) is some kind of righteous moral crusade:

"The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations."

Now let's deconstruct this argument.

Firstly, prior to the arrival of the Internet and digital technologies, that scientific and cultural heritage was found typed onto paper stored as journals, books, monographs and so forth in myriads of libraries across the world. Nothing that MIT has done - or for that matter any of the publishers of academic research - changes this situation. Those books and other source materials are still 'locked up' in libraries and archives. Some of which have public access but most of which don't.

The point of JSTOR and other similar digital archives isn't to wickedly exploit the world's heritage but to ensure that, whatever happens to the current holders of that heritage, it remains available to the world's researchers. And the process of digitizing that heritage isn't cheap but right now is being paid for by the fact that JSTOR is able to recover costs from users (who otherwise might have to trip round the world to view the documents in question unless the holders of those documents were happy to use the well-established 'inter-library loan' system).

The question for all these self-righteous campaigners for "open access" is therefore, who pays? After all there's still a cost to digitizing content - it has to be scanned, key-worded, indexed, abstracted and stored in a searchable and recoverable way. And funnily enough all that work costs a lot of money. Then it has to be made available, promoted, catalogued and the server space paid for. This also costs a lot of money.

If the user isn't going to pay - directly through a per-use fee or indirectly via their institution - then somebody else has to cough up. And the only remaining candidate for stumping up the cash is the government - the taxpayer. So, far from being a liberation, so-called "open access" simply involves handing control of the entire system to the government and the costs to a load of people who have no interest in accessing the information.

So we replace a system where the world's intellectual heritage is largely available when needed to people who want to use it but which costs the taxpayer nothing with a system where everyone - including all those folk who aren't interested - can access but where there's a multi-billion dollar cost to the taxpayer.

This isn't about copyright but about how we pay for things we want - like saving the world's heritage for posterity. And it's much better done without loads of extra cost on the poor old taxpayer don't you think?

Finally, let's remember that seeking - through hacking and illegal downloading - to undermine this process serves nobody. It threatens the work of academic societies, it undermines the librarianship and archiving role of libraries and it means that access can only be sustained if it is the government's wish for that access to be sustained.

However we look at it, Open Access isn't free. Unless of course you steal the books.

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I guess most members of the Society of Authors never studied statistics...

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A little storm on a bookshelf stirred up by the Society of Authors (an august body that I'd never heard of - can't see why authors need a society but, hey, that's there business) over the Public Lending Right (PLR) scheme that gives authors a payment based on how many times their books are borrowed from public libraries.

Last week DCMS confirmed that most community libraries will not be included in the Public Lending Right scheme (PLR) which provides authors with a modest payment...

And...

Taking volunteer libraries out of the scheme will lead to a drop in book loans which may encourage Government to propose cutting the already meagre fund still further.

Essentially, the Society of Authors having had the system explained to them (a sample of libraries is taken - mostly for convenience large central libraries - from which an estimate of borrowing numbers is calculated) have decided to make up a scare story to cover up their embarrassment. There are actually no changes to the scheme and authors will be paid precisely what they would have been paid prior to the arrival of these community (i.e. volunteer run) libraries.

More importantly, the argument that "taking volunteer libraries out of the scheme will lead to a drop in book loans" is patent nonsense. Unless of course the Society of Authors can find some evidence that borrowing rates have some relationship to the amount of PLR paid to authors - which that can't because there isn't any.

And somehow I doubt that authors will suddenly stop writing because that cheque for £270 (roughly the average author payment under the scheme) doesn't land on the mat. Or is a little less - perhaps £220.

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...a thought about 'open access' publishing (from someone cleverer than me)

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So the great and good want academic research published 'open access' at enormous cost - probably to the taxpayers (nearly all of whom won't have any need or interest in 'accessing' said publications). It is, was and always will be something of a daft idea.

However, Cullingworth's resident publishing expert (yes we have one) suggests that a far simpler solution would be to negotiate a national public library licence with the publishers and aggregators. It would cost a lot of money but far - the expert's precise words were "far, far, far, far" - less than the cost to taxpayers of the nonsensical 'open access' proposals.

Just a thought.

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Academic publishing and the 'tragedy of the commons'

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I'm sure Mr Worstall did so inadvertently but his castigation of the Royal Society's 'save the planet' report also explained another first world problem - why 'open access' publishing doesn't work:

"...if you have an open access commons and then demand for that resource exceeds the regenerative capacity of the resource, then you have to move away from a Marxian (his word) open access commons to some form of limitation of access. This limitation of access could be social (socialist) or private property (capitalist) but some form of limitation there must be."

You see that the problem for academics (and university libraries - although this is mostly special pleading to protect their budgets) is that 'open access' still uses up the limited resource of time and money available for the purpose of publishing. And because the user is not paying, that money and time isn't replaced. Or rather, the taxpayer's representatives trim the money available as they choose to direct it to other purposes.

So the outcome of 'open access' publishing won't, in the end, be open access but will be access that is rationed or controlled in someway. Most likely, since this is how the world works, by charging users for the use they make of the resource. However, it will be the Universities that collect this money rather than publishers.

And where did all those publishers start? Oh, yes - universities. Looks to me more and more like a power grab rather than a liberalisation of access.

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On the Elsevier boycott...

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...and why it isn't working. This is from Exane BNP Paribus on the LibLicence ListServ:

* Noise around boycott against Elsevier offers short term trading opportunity

Reed Elsevier was the worst performing media stock last week. We believe this is due to investor concerns on the back of T. Gowers' petition to boycott publishing and refereeing in Elsevier's journals. We believe the share price reaction was overdone and recommend buying the shares.

* Scientists are boycotting the boycott

Similar petitions in favour of Open Access were organised in 2000 and 2007, with no impact on Elsevier's fundamentals. Our tracking not only shows that this latest petition lags behind the two preceding ones but also suggests that its momentum is slowing. Fewer than 5,000 scientists have signed up, whereas Elsevier works with more than 6m scientists worldwide. The low take-up of this petition is a sign of the scientific community's improving perception of Elsevier.

* Open Access unlikely to hurt financials in the medium term and is priced in

The proportion of Open Access is growing at less than 1% pa. Elsevier's contract lengths are getting longer and the company's growth efforts are focused on new products rather than pricing. Open Access is unlikely to hurt Elsevier in the next five years and the longer term risk is more than priced in, in our view

The killer line in that for me is that Elsevier works with Six Million authors - those "protesting" make up less that 0.1% of that base. And since studies show that 90% of academic researchers are satisfied with their access to the research literature, the whole spat just seems more like an annoyance that something that will lead to journal publishers changing their business models.

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Scary Quote of the Day...

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Judith Schilling is the "publications manager" for the European Commission's London Office and says:

“We will never succeed in convincing people about the value of being a member of the European Union if we do not start early enough with the young people before they form prejudices and are misinformed by other sources.”

Perhaps "propaganda manager" would be a more apt job title?

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We need copyright to prevent censorship and promote freedom

Much of the debate surrounding the current Digital Economy Bill focuses on the dissemination of popular culture and the mechanisms to make that culture available – music, film and software. However, there is another business that will be profoundly affected by these proposals – academic publishing. These are some of the world’s oldest businesses – Cambridge University Press was founded in 1534 and Elsevier, the biggest academic publisher in 1580. And to understand the significance of copyright to this industry (a major contributor to the UK’s economy) we must go back to the origins of copyright law in 1709, The Statute of Anne.

Although the official title of this act was, “An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned", in truth it was intended to curb the claim of perpetual copyright claimed by publishers under common law (since the previous provisions – registration with the Stationers’ Company - had lapsed). However, the two sources of copyright provision – the 1709 Act and common law – continued side by side up to 1774 when the House of Lords ruled perpetual copyright invalid (Donaldson vs. Beckett). This ruling included this important definition of ‘property’ from Sir Peter Wedderburn, the Solicitor General:

“Literary property had, by those who spoke before him, been said to be so abstruse and chimerical, that it was not possible to define it. The interpretation they had put upon the word, 'property' was, that it implied something corporeal, tangible, and material... He begged leave to differ from this opinion, and to point out how common it was for terms to be misapplied as to their import. The word 'property' had, by the ablest writers, been called 'jus utendi, fruendi, disponendi;' it was therefore. evident that any idea, although it was incorporeal in itself, yet if it promised future profit to the inventor of it, was a property.”

Plus the scoping to the bounds of copyright itself:

“It was absurd to imagine, that either a sale, a loan, or a gift of a book, carried with it an Implied right of multiplying copies; so much paper and print were sold, lent, or given, and an unlimited perusal was warranted from such sale, loan or gift, but it could not be conceived that when 5s. were paid for a book, the seller meant to transfer a right of gaining 1001.; every man must feel to the contrary, and confess the absurdity of such an argument.”

And if a copyright is a property, then we have to recognise the right of that property’s owner to make use of it as he wishes – including the right to sell. Or as we know with academic publishing to give away in exchange for editing, peer review and dissemination – plus of course protection of the author’s interests vis plagiarism. This is the publishing process and it is essential to academia however funded. Under the established – copyright protected – model there is no cost to the author as the subscriber pays. There are open access models based on authors paying for publication but these only work where there is significant and substantial public funding available (e.g. PubMed).

This is an important debate – personally I support only some of the campaigners arguments but the manner in which the bill has been captured by producer interests should concern us (although phrases like “Formula One” and “fox hunting” do spring to mind at this point). Let’s be clear, however, that despite the wonders of the web the publishing process remains important – maybe not to a new Indie rock band from Scunthorpe but certainly to the advancement of academic understanding.

If we enter into a free-for-all on copyright we run the risk of killing the goose laying the golden egg – and I don’t mean Bono creaming off a few more millions for crappy stadium rock. Without copyright there is no basis for publishers to operate – it is a simple as that. We return to the situation prior to the 1709 Act where protection is fought for in the Chancery Court or using common law or where there is protection for some censored publishing but not for uncensored publishing. And, if we deem copyright to be property, we have a duty as a society to enforce the rights to that property whoever they may be held by.

The question for Governments should be to ask what is appropriate, what can be enforced and where the bounds for the protection of copyright actually lay. In my view, the onus should lie with the owner of the copyright and his agents to take action. Government should make it possible for such action to be taken but not through the agency of a Whitehall Department.

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Two family stories - and why barring people without a degree from nursing is wrong

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Family Story #1

My Uncle was a judge. OK, I hear you - "Tory has judge for uncle, surprise, surprise". But my uncle - Ray Palmer - was one of the first solicitors to join the circuit.

So what? Oh yes - my uncle did not have a university degree. He joined a solicitors at 14 straight from school and worked his way up through the firm.

Today a young man from Ray's working class background would find it really hard to achieve what he did - to achieve without a university degree

Family Story #2

My wife is a publisher. She was a director of a leading academic publisher for many years and is widely regarded and respected in the business.

I'm very proud - she has achieved more and contributed more than I have.

So what? My wife does not have a university degree.

Taking these two stories as examples - and there are thousands more. Why are we barring yet another profession - nursing - to those who choose not to go to university. The idea that you can learn how to be a nurse in three years at university is ridiculous - and thousands of young people with loads to contribute are now unable to fulfill their promise and their dreams.