Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
However, you can argue the other way. Research universities cannot fulfill their mission unless their researchers have access to current literature in their field. Publishers taking advantage of this have created the serials crisis. Important academic books are also high priced. Here is a good example of how they price a quite well-reviewed research monograph. (You'll notice, by the way, that this current book has no eBook version, thus deterring piracy.) |
Academia has been the home of captive audiences and price gouging as long as anyone can remember. This is just a symptom of a couple of greater problems. The 800# gorilla in the living room is the fact that higher "learning" is more a racket to extort money out of people or force them into career- destroying debt just to remove a social stigma, than to actually educate them.
Quote:
|
Providing access to current best-sellers, whether paper or eBook, is arguably the public library equivalent of football for a research university. It brings in donations, but doesn't have much to do with the core mission of creating knowledge (in the case of the research university) or literacy promotion (in the case of the library).
|
Research is dying in the US anyway. SOPA/PIPA would've flat- out killed it. Everything is going to corporate labs anyway, where it can be patented more quickly and either used or suppressed.