Sharp practice

During my keynote for the Zukunft Personal event in Cologne, I publicly announced that I would no longer publish my work in closed journals. In truth, the last time one of my papers was published in a pay-to-subscribe journal was quite some time ago. I'm not the first academic who has made this stand and hopefully I won't be the last. Many others now only publish their work in open access journals, and I intend to do the same. I will still also continue to write for professional journals and magazines such as Learning Technologies. I'm also going to continue writing these blog posts for as long as people like you find them useful, and continue to come back for more.

But my days of helping to fill the academic publishers' coffers are over.

For a long time I have felt very strongly that some academic publishers are operating a sharp practice by exploiting the goodwill of scholars. Large groups of lecturers and researchers act as journal authors and reviewers without payment, and then the publishers sell this content on to other academics at grossly inflated prices. Other highly knowledgeable academics give up their time, also for no payment, to review and advise editors on the content, and this can be painstaking work - read this by Martin Weller on the real cost of 'free reviewing'. This is not sustainable and must change. The publishing industry should no longer be allowed to operate such cynical, profiteering business models. The content they sell has been given to them for free by exceptionally skilled academics who have spent their valuable time and energy researching and writing their reports. The price we are expected to pay to read the work of our own community is unjustifiable. How much does it cost a publishing house to create and maintain an online journal? The cost of reading journal articles should be reduced or eradicated completely, or academics should vote with their feet. What would happen if we all pledged to no longer patronise the publishing houses in future? What would be their response if we all promised we would no longer publish our work in their journals? Actually, I articulated these very sentiments in What if they threw a party and none of us came? on my blog last year. If all academics withdrew their labour, the publishers would have to think again. Here are some of the facts and figures taken from the publishers' websites:

Taking out a personal subscription of a Taylor and Francis journal can be particularly expensive. Learning, Media and Technology (4 issues a year) comes in at around £70 per issue. Sister journal Technology, Pedagogy and Education (3 issues each year) is much cheaper at £18 per issue. Another T and F journal Interactive Learning Environments (currently 5 issues a year) works out at just over £26 per issue for an individual subscription. Taylor and Francis also offer individual online articles for download at just £21 per copy. Wiley's British Journal of Educational Technology will cost you between £232 (or £403 for the rest of world) for 6 issues. That's more than £38 (£67) for an issue, each of which is on average 175 pages in length. A slightly better deal is Elsevier's Computers in Education journal which at 8 issues a year works out at just £34 per issue for a personal subscription. Why the fluctuation in prices? Only the publishers can explain that one. I ask again, why do publishers charge such high prices for knowledge? If we continue to allow knowledge to be commoditised to such an extent that it is only available to the privileged few who can afford it, we are in effect, perpetuating an unjust society. In the long term, this can only damage the academic community.

Image by Pieter de Vries


Sharp practice by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Business games

I gave a keynote speech at the Zukunft Personal - a massive HRM Expo and conference - today, in Cologne, Germany. One of my presentation themes in the main arena was 'openness'. My keynote went well and afterwards I was asked during the discussion whether companies would be wise to give their ideas away for free. I had previously explained that increasingly, many teachers and lecturers are sharing their content freely, because we are aware of the need to improve learning while reducing cost. Its not completely altruistic. Many of us are handsomely rewarded for this free giving. If the content is open for re-use and repurposing, it is almost always more widely and more quickly disseminated than it would be if it were closed. Some academics share their content through social media to get it 'out there' to the public more quickly, and in a more visible way, so that dialogue is encouraged and amplification can occur. Giving away content therefore makes sense to a lot of teachers and lecturers, because they want to gain a larger audience for their ideas.

But does it make good sense, my conference host asked, if commercial organisations were also to give away their products with no charge? Would this not result in lost revenue for those companies? The predominantly corporate sector audience waited expectantly for my answer. There were more suits on view than at Moss Bros. In my response, I echoed what I had earlier said in my Zukunft Personal keynote - Open Educational Resources are the start of a movement that is already transferring itself to the business sector. It is already happening not just in companies such as Google and Facebook, whose business model is to advertise on the back of free products in a pay-per-click strategy. I pointed out that some major players in the gaming industry are participating. One of the leaders in the game engine world is Unity, who sell their Unity Pro developer software package for $1500 but give away a lower level version of the same package for free. How can they afford to do this? The reason is quite clear. Unity wants games developers everywhere to use their software, and wants to encourage a community of interest to form around its products. It gives them a competitive edge over their rivals. Unity does so by not only offering free software but also an evaluation service on games that have been developed using their software. Last year the company announced its Union partnership scheme. If your game is deemed to be commercially viable, Unity will market it across a variety of platforms, and takes 20 per cent commission on all subsequent sales. Other gaming companies are following similar business models. How long will it be before companies in other sectors of business and industry begin to give their products away for free to become even more competitive in their niche sector?


Business games by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.