March has been really busy with work and teaching and some family business, but I have done a bit of writing. Today, the Library Journal Academic Newswire published my first contribution to the newly reorganized Peer to Peer Review column. In addition to Barbara Fister, who has been writing great stuff in that column for a long time, the new column also includes Rick Anderson, Dorothea Salo, Kevin Smith, and me writing weekly in rotation. I was pleased to be asked, but I have to say that when I saw the list of strong contributors I felt uncharacteristically daunted for a moment. Here’s the first column: The Two Cultures.

My book on Libraries and the Enlightenment has now been published! It was just announced today. You can order a copy from the Library Juice Press or from Amazon.

The Library Juice site has a blurb, but here’s a bit more on what to expect. Chapter 1 provides a summary and analysis of the scientific and political principles of the Enlightenment, especially those that relate to the library history discussed in the book. Chapter 2 shows how Enlightenment principles led to the foundation of the first research university, and the way in which the research university model revolutionized higher education and enabled the creation of modern academic libraries. Chapter 3 investigates how the same principles inspired the public library movement in the U.S. Chapter 4 discusses examples of what I call the “universal library,” including the Library at Alexandria, Gabriel Naudé’s 17th-century Advice on Establishing a Library, H.G. Wells’ “World Brain,” Vannevar Bush’s Memex, Google, and the Digital Public Library of America. Finally, it argues that a universal library universally accessible would be the culmination of the Enlightenment in the domain of information, and that such a universal library would be built upon the current network of American libraries. There’s a lot of history and a bit of politics. It’s a good introduction to and survey of the topic for librarians, library school students, or anyone interested in the history of libraries.

So I hope you’ll buy a copy for yourself or your library (or both!).

The desire to turn every bit of reading into a monetary transaction seems to me driven by a short term strategy that in the end would be destructive for publishers, not to mention the entire country, because the system of reading that supports publishers, libraries, and general literacy depends upon non-market forces that would be destroyed if indeed the ultimate commodification of reading were successful. We might call this system of reading the lectosystem, and like a natural ecosystem it is a sensitive totality where change in one place can have negative effects in another place. The lectosystem would collapse if all reading were commodified.

The more literate a population, the more books will be read, and the more books that are read the more books will be bought, even if not all the books read are bought directly by the individual reader. But mass literacy requires that some people get books for free, whether it’s through public schools, school libraries, public libraries, college libraries, charity, or gifts. To make this impossible, which is the implied end of turning every reading transaction into a monetary exchange, would reduce the percentage of the population that can read, which will not only ultimately reduce the number of books sold, but even further decrease the educational average in the U.S., which never seems very high even in the best of times. This inevitably would lead to the long, slow decline of America as a leading country.

Well, maybe that’s a bit extreme, to blame publishers refusing to sell ebooks to libraries for destroying the country. However, there’s still a lectosystem upon which everyone involved with books depends, and that system includes not only publishers and their market relation to readers, but also libraries and the gift economy. To destroy that system would also damage the market for books. If publishers thought about the long term, they might realize this, but long term thinking is anathema to most corporations.

On the other hand, publishers probably don’t have that kind of power. If the current lectosystem is damaged, it might repair itself and end up bypassing current publishers. A recent news story reported on a study by Columbia University which found “70 per cent of 18- to 29-year-olds said they had bought, copied or downloaded unauthorized music.” The story was about music “piracy,” but I’m sure a large percentage of that cohort who read books do the same thing. (I put piracy in quotation marks because I find it amusing to compare this with this.)  It’s a fear of “piracy” that drives publisher support for SOPA. They really seem to think that the laws can lock technology down to the nineteenth century standards that publishers seem to like so much, just like Amazon thinks its DRM really keeps determined readers from doing what they like with their Kindle ebooks. Or just like a decade ago, when movie and music corporations thought the DMCA would help control what people did with the media they thought they had purchased. Legally, you can’t copy the video from a DVD you’ve purchased to play it on a portable device. The reality is quite different, and unless you’re sharing the file with a torrent service or something there’s not much anyone can do about it. If millions of people flout a law and don’t feel the slightest bit bad about it, that’s a good sign that the law isn’t in the public interest, and that’s what routinely happening with online “piracy.”

People who read are going to read more than they could afford to read if every book read was a book individually purchased, and the more expensive the books the more that will be the case.  If publishers try to make that impossible, so much the worse for the publishers. Platforms like Amazon are already allowing writers to connect to readers and also make some money. There’s no inherent reason that public libraries couldn’t set up a similar system to connect writers to readers that would get more reading into the hands of more people while still allowing writers to profit. This would be parallel to the movement in academic libraries to support open access. It’s not that everything would be free or freely provided, only that the costs would be lowered through technological efficiency and the absence of a need for the content provider to also make a profit.

The purpose of publishers, from Elsevier to Penguin, is to sell stuff to make a profit. The purpose of libraries, both academic and public, isn’t to buy books and journals. The purpose is to connect interested readers with interesting reading, whether that’s a scholarly article on philosophy for the philosopher or a mystery novel for the general library user, or for that matter, a mystery novel for the philosopher who might want to read something besides scholarly articles. Libraries of some sort are crucial to the lectosystem because they’re the most popular places to read more widely than one can afford to read if every act of reading requires an individual purchase. Publishers used to be crucial, but are much less so now. They’re easier and easier to bypass, whether it’s through non-commercial open access journals or self-publishing at Amazon. I’m not that worried about the future of libraries, because I think libraries will be able to adapt and continue their contributions to the lectosystem. I would be more worried about the future of my industry if I worked for Elsevier or Simon and Schuster.*

*I was already working on a draft of this post, but a stimulating lunch conversation today with Pete Bromberg of the Princeton Public Library influenced my thinking in the last couple of paragraphs.

The news and commentary surrounding the Research Works Act and the Elsevier boycott is coming faster than I can keep up, so I’ve been dipping my toes occasionally, making my way through some of the links posted at Confessions of a Science Librarian, plus a couple of things that I don’t think John has linked to yet, including this Richard Poynder interview with Alicia Wise from Elsevier (via Infodocket) and this long justification of the boycott signed by 34 prominent mathematicians (via NewAPPS).

Alicia Wise was also quoted last week in this article from the Chronicle of Higher Education: “while Elsevier in the 1980s and 1990s did increase prices steeply year after year, that has stopped. ‘We got it wrong then. But we’ve improved and have become good citizens,’ she said. So much of the community ire comes from past reputation, not present practice, she said.” The problem is that “past reputation” is related to “present practice.”

They got it wrong, sort of. In my own previous summary of Elsevier’s actions, I wrote that “Pub­lish­ers know how unlikely we are to sac­ri­fice key titles. Many years ago they tried to max­i­mize their profit by rais­ing jour­nal prices at four times the rate of infla­tion. When libraries finally cracked and started cut­ting sub­scrip­tions, they got us to give up all con­trol and agree to multi-year pack­ages where they would raise the prices each year by only twice the rate of infla­tion, and we agreed to ease our pain.” They “got it wrong” because they were raising prices faster than library budgets but were leaving libraries with the option of unsubscribing from individual titles. Now they’ve “gotten it right” because they’ve removed that option.

Regardless, the response acknowledges prices increased too steeply every year for more than a decade. Price have increased less steeply since the rise of the “big deal,” but with other consequences. Nevertheless, if we assume that the previous very steep increases were solely because Elsevier could profit in a monopoly environment, then the prices libraries were left with facing the “big deals” were already exorbitant. Libraries thus began subscribing to “big deals” after paying way too much previously, but it’s not like they started paying less to Elsevier than they did in the bad old days that created Elsevier’s “past reputation.” They still pay more, but the “more” rises less.

Combine this thought with a phrase Elsevier likes, the “historic spend.” Elsevier wants libraries to continue to pay for access to their journal packages based upon what they have paid before, the “historic spend,” regardless of current needs or budgets. But the “historic spend” grew out of pricing levels that were so exploitative libraries finally had to stop subscribing to journals they needed. Add to this the fact that Elsevier doesn’t want anyone to know what anyone else is spending on Elsevier journals, going so far as to sue Washington State University to keep them from releasing an unredacted copy of their contract with Elsevier.

Just considering this and not regarding all the other charges against them, only the truly naive could believe Elsevier is a “good citizen” in the world of scholarly publishing rather than a corporation with the sole goal of maximizing its profit. As I’ve written before, I don’t think that makes them evil; it just makes them a typical corporation. However, that doesn’t mean that anyone in academia should believe their corporate spin.

I contributed a guest post on Becoming a Departmental Liaison to Letters to a Young Librarian, which is a relatively new blog aimed at new librarians where guests are asked, “Is there something you wish you’d known when you were a graduate student and/or a brand new to libraries?” My post sort of addresses that question.

Despite the overwhelming negative response to the Research Works Act from the science community, at least as indicated by the faculty blogs John DuPuis links to (what, still no bullet summary, John?), I’m not quite ready to agree with the Library Loon that the shoe is on the other foot. She opines, correctly I believe, that “Faculty don’t like to hear ‘don’t.’ Not from librarians, and not even from publishers.” One example supporting this claim is this English professor’s refusal to sign away his copyright to Oxford University Press. “I am unwilling,” he writes, “to countenance such an abridgement of my ability to make the words that I have written more freely available.” He maintains that scholarly publications are the work of the author and not the publisher.

However, even if the Research Works Act became law, it wouldn’t be telling faculty they can’t do something. It would be telling Federal agencies that they couldn’t do something, which is a different thing. From the bill text:

No Federal agency may adopt, implement, maintain, continue, or otherwise engage in any policy, program, or other activity that–

(1) causes, permits, or authorizes network dissemination of any private-sector research work without the prior consent of the publisher of such work; or

(2) requires that any actual or prospective author, or the employer of such an actual or prospective author, assent to network dissemination of a private-sector research work.

As far as I can tell from the text of the bill, though, there’s no stipulation that the authors of research articles can’t post those articles on their own websites or in institutional repositories. It just says that the government can’t force them to do that as a condition of funding.

But, theoretically, the publishers supporting the Research Works Act should want to go further than stopping Federal open access mandates. In the press release opposing the NIH policy that spurred action against it, the Association of American Publishers, they make the following arguments against open access:

When an author asks a publisher to publish a research article, the author agrees to transfer copyright so the publisher will undertake the effort and expense of preparing the article for final publication. The publisher relies on holding copyright to enable it to recoup publication costs and continue to invest in scientific communication. The full benefit of copyright protections is weakened when authors are required to permit NIH to make their journal articles available to the public for free. Moreover, the mandated access policy gives publishers little or no subsequent safeguards from piracy.

Presumably, “the full benefit of copyright protections is weakened when authors” post their work online period, even on their own websites or institutional repositories. How could that not be the case? And if it is the case, then the AAP and others must also be opposed to all such “network dissemination” of research, even if the research isn’t publicly funded by a Federal agency.

Thus, theoretically, the anti-OA publishers should be opposed to the institutional open access policies implemented by Harvard and Princeton and others in the past few years. The faculty of both universities supported making their work more accessible. The faculty at Princeton voted unanimously to adopt an open access policy. It’s not a mandate, because faculty can seek waivers for particular articles, but it’s a sweeping policy that forcefully states the desire to make research publicly accessible and to not give away all rights to publishers. Granted, Harvard and Princeton are private universities, but policies like these still run afoul of the publisher’s arguments against Federal mandates. Articles published in journals from Elsevier by leading researchers will also be freely available online.

The final provocation of the faculty will come when publishers start paying for legislation making institutional open access policies and personal “networked dissemination” of one’s own research illegal. That will be the moment when faculty start hearing “don’t” from publishers, because that will be the moment that publishers try to deliberately and publicly interfere with decisions about their institutions or their research that the faculty have made themselves. When or if that time comes, we might finally see widespread revolt against the worst abuses of commercial scholarly publishers. The question is whether  in their drive for profits the offensive publishers will finally be brazen enough to alienate the community that provides all their free content.

There’s been a lot written about the Research Works Act in the past week or so. I’m too swamped right now to keep up with it all, but John Dupuis has a nice collection of links for those with a few hours to read up on the topic, though I do wish he’d prepare a bullet list summarizing all the posts for all us busy librarians. I don’t have anything new to add, but I have been thinking of the RWA in historical context. The modern research university was originally created to allow professors to research any topic they wanted, pursue the results of the research wherever they might lead, and to publish the research for the world to share. (You can read all about this development and how it led to the foundation of modern academic libraries in my forthcoming book, Libraries and the Enlightenment.)

There’s a lot of support for open access in the ideas of those who founded research universities. One of the most influential, Daniel Coit Gilman, was the first president of the Johns Hopkins University. He believed that research universities should be “devoted to the discovery and promulgation of the truth,” and that “It is one of the noblest duties of a university to advance knowledge, and to diffuse it not merely among those who can attend the daily lectures–but far and wide.” Because Gilman believed in the promulgation as well as the discovery of truth, he founded not only the first German Model graduate school in America, but the JHU Press as well, which is the longest running university press in America. University  presses devoted to scholarship and not profits are the natural means of publishing academic research, but universities never adequately funded them, often insisting that they support themselves, even when the whole point was that they were publishing material that wasn’t commercially viable. (For a short history on university presses, consider Cecile M. Jagodzinski’s “The University Press in North America: a Brief History,”Journal of Scholarly Publishing, October 2008, 1-20, available from Project Muse).

One of the founding principles of the modern research university was that the results of that research should be published and widely available, but that principle was ignored over the years if not completely forgotten. If research universities and university presses had lived up to their promise, there would never have been a serials crisis or an open access movement. Were Gilman around today, he might be appalled at the way big universities have become big businesses that cut unprofitable research programs or the way that university researchers give their research results to companies that sell the results for a profit, but he would probably support open access initiatives as among the best ways to promulgate the truth he hoped universities would help discover. The creation of open access directives by the faculty at universities like Harvard and Princeton show that most professors still value the original motivation to share the results of their research widely. Though it seems dark days for the founding ideals of research universities, maybe it’s not yet too late after all, and maybe with enough provocation academic researchers will band together to make their research truly accessible to all.