Mergers between scholarly publishers occur fairly regularly, meaning librarians and information professionals are not surprised when another is announced. This unsurprised outlook does not diminish the annoyance or dread these information professionals feel for the upcoming renewal season. License terms may change, cost will almost certainly increase, and it is possible that access may be lost entirely if an unsubscribing company buys out a subscribed company. Outside the academic context, it can be worrisome when a large publisher purchases an Open Access resource, such as the recent purchase of the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) by Elsevier. At the present time, librarians and information professionals are combating the monopolized
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This has lead to the rise of Open Access in the last decade. Legal methods of Open Access exist, whether it is directly through the publisher, by contacting the author directly, or having the author pay a, usually large, fee to have the article classified as Open Access. It is the illegal “shadow library” methods that have risen in popularity in recent years. One of the most popular sites to obtain pirated papers and articles is Sci-Hub, established in 2011 by Alexandra Elbakyan. She has similar views to Bergstrom in that “[c]opyright…is intrinsically unfair. It protects the powerful and punishes the poor” (Ojala, 2016, p.6), but instead of offering a way to fix the system Elbakyan created a repository that circumvents the system. Sci-Hub benefits “researchers in countries where access to premier journals is nonexistent” (Ojala, 2016, p.6), allowing for more free flowing transfer of information from west to east, north to south and vice versa. At institutions where subscriptions are paid for “[l]ibrarians worry that Sci-Hub will result in higher subscription prices as publishers lose revenue due to its piracy” (Ojala, 2016, …show more content…
These primarily affecting the purchased party, but may reflect the changing methods disseminating scholarly information like in the case of Elsevier purchasing the Social Science Research Network, an open access database. A successful merger minimizes change for end users; so that they are unaware the larger change has occurred. In the case of price increase, mergers cannot be blamed as publishers increase the cost of subscriptions with each fiscal year or renewal period. Generally, outside merger negotiations and license review by information professionals, end users (library patrons) don’t recognize when usage terms change unless a complete cancellation occurs. This would indicate that the flow of information is not interrupted, provided access exists in the first place. Scholarly publishers are in the business of information, and it would behoove the various companies to keep such interruptions to a minimum when they do occur, in order to keep users from before the merger, as well as attracting new users coming from the purchasing
This has lead to the rise of Open Access in the last decade. Legal methods of Open Access exist, whether it is directly through the publisher, by contacting the author directly, or having the author pay a, usually large, fee to have the article classified as Open Access. It is the illegal “shadow library” methods that have risen in popularity in recent years. One of the most popular sites to obtain pirated papers and articles is Sci-Hub, established in 2011 by Alexandra Elbakyan. She has similar views to Bergstrom in that “[c]opyright…is intrinsically unfair. It protects the powerful and punishes the poor” (Ojala, 2016, p.6), but instead of offering a way to fix the system Elbakyan created a repository that circumvents the system. Sci-Hub benefits “researchers in countries where access to premier journals is nonexistent” (Ojala, 2016, p.6), allowing for more free flowing transfer of information from west to east, north to south and vice versa. At institutions where subscriptions are paid for “[l]ibrarians worry that Sci-Hub will result in higher subscription prices as publishers lose revenue due to its piracy” (Ojala, 2016, …show more content…
These primarily affecting the purchased party, but may reflect the changing methods disseminating scholarly information like in the case of Elsevier purchasing the Social Science Research Network, an open access database. A successful merger minimizes change for end users; so that they are unaware the larger change has occurred. In the case of price increase, mergers cannot be blamed as publishers increase the cost of subscriptions with each fiscal year or renewal period. Generally, outside merger negotiations and license review by information professionals, end users (library patrons) don’t recognize when usage terms change unless a complete cancellation occurs. This would indicate that the flow of information is not interrupted, provided access exists in the first place. Scholarly publishers are in the business of information, and it would behoove the various companies to keep such interruptions to a minimum when they do occur, in order to keep users from before the merger, as well as attracting new users coming from the purchasing