Academia struggles to pay up as Journal prices soar!

What is "Open Access"? Explained by PhD comics

In yet another story headlining publishing houses, India's top science officials have expressed concern over not being able to afford subscriptions to international science journals, budgeted at Rs 500 crores for the 5 year period covered by the 12th five-year plan (2012-2017). 

The issue is concisely captured in the quote in the LiveMint article here: "“I’ll try my best to get this (budget for journals) passed, though I doubt whether the Planning Commission will allot Rs.500 crore just for journals,” Ravi (Science minister at the time) said last week as part of a longer speech on the 60th anniversary of the National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources (Niscair), a CSIR body. Access to academic journals is a basic necessity for professional scientists. Researchers compete to publish their best research in top academic journals and the frequency of articles in top journals is crucial to career progression as well as the general advancement of science." 

According to the article, prices have gone up about 5 times since the previous 5 year plan! It's not only Indian officials who are uncomfortable with the rise in prices. Tired of rising prices, Harvard too, had issued a memo earlier this year requesting their faculty to make their work available freely and/or in open access journals. 

(On a tangentially related note, there is an interesting piece advocating the abolishment of law reviews here) 

But why this sudden rise in prices? Off the top of my head, and (please note, full disclaimer) without looking into the working of the publishing industry and the data etc, I would like to hazard a guess as to what is probably one factor. 

Copyrights are a set of incentives to encourage proliferation of knowledge and information. When it comes to academic work, there are several incentives present for research - the primary ones being reputational benefits, requirements for positions and promotions, and scientific curiousity. The incentives for academics to publish this research, accordingly, also primarily stem from these factors.

However, copyright steps in and gives (financial) incentives to "Publishers" instead of academics, to increase publications. (And in doing so, it disregards the incentives that are already present for the academics to publish). And as all businesses go, business sense requires going after more profits. This does not mean that publishing houses do not require capital or revenues to continue operating, of course. I would not even go so far as to call them a 'necessary evil'.. and would simply call them 'necessary'. However, our policy seems to be geared towards the 'middleman', rather than the creators. And without strict regulation, it is but natural that the middleman rises in importance in the whole equation. The sudden rise? Because with the internet and of course the recession, they seem to be losing control of their hold on the market, and are trying to grab back as much as they can, so they can continue as before. 

With the rise of the digital world however, much of the capital required to disperse information is no longer required. The printing press is replaced with a computer and an internet connection. However, in order to organise the flood of information, there definitely needs to be some organization and quality control. Will open access journals step up to fit this role? We are yet to see. However, given the rising costs of journals, academic institutions may start seeing it fit to invest more into quality control of open access, than traditional methods. Indeed, UK has already said they are going to fully support open access journals in physics, allowing readers free access to journals for particle physics. There may be some controversy over their particular business model, but it shows a big move towards experimenting with non-traditional methods. I see it quite likely that other countries / institutes will be following suit, or trying their own methods of promoting open access. 

I'll leave you with what seems to be a good source for finding open access journals - the Directory of Open Access Journals. 


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As posted by me on SpicyIP.com

Google may need to change their motto

(As posted by me on SpicyIP)

Coming this week, Google will be making what could be a ground breaking step in it's search algorithm. Google will start downranking sites in proportion to the the number of valid copyright removal notices that the site receives. According to Google, "This ranking change should help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily". While on the surface, this seems like a good anti-piracy move, I shall explain why I think it could be a major problem. 

I had earlier covered some of the problems with the 'personalization' that online giants seem to be doing. That argument was more controversial - essentially claiming that they are not giving people what they want, but rather that they are giving people what Google (for eg) thinks they want (based on their search history) and this limits their information intake and presents a less balanced / less neutral result. I would go further to add that even if they kept giving people what they wanted on a search term, ie, something they're looking up information on, but limiting it to results based on the user's history, this is akin to encouraging a society where views are discouraged from being contradicted and debate and discussion takes a backseat. 

However, this new change to algorithms gives rise to an easier argument : that the search engine giant is presenting users what others want them to see and this is inherently a problem. Google emphasizes that it won't remove content unless a valid copyright removal request is received. However, copyright is certainly not a black and white affair. Do you create an algorithm that detects fair use? Or public domain? No, it's not possible. So what about the notices that target content that falls in these categories? And those could still be good-faith mistakes. What about all the bad-faith / reckless notices that MPAA / RIAA have had no hesitation in sending out (including to dead people and a homeless man!)? Also, Google states that they would be taking down sites with high number of removal notices. What about the following (hypothetical) situation: A small site 'swarajshare' which gives out only pirated media but only stores 500 movies -- vs -- vimeo or veoh or viddler or youtube even! They are all massive and certainly store more than 500 movies. But they probably receive 1000s of valid takedown notices. Does n't this now mean that youtube or vimeo would be lower in their search results than swarajshare even when users are not looking for pirated material? And does changing their algorithm the first step onto a slippery slope? Do other search engines now also give in? Does Google start contemplating more such steps to 'stop piracy'? These are all questions that we will probably see answers to in the near future and can only hope that access to knowledge and creativity aren't killed in the guise of protecting content. (On that note, slightly tangential but a here is a thought provoking study on one of the effects of No copyright - though to be clear I am not an advocate of 'no copyright' but rather of more limited copyright protection)

Rohan George puts it aptly when he says "More than anything else, this signals the end of an era when Google's main interest was delivering information and not 'content'". 

Some sources speculate that Google could be conceding this change because it needs media companies to keep them in their good books in order for them to successfully build an eco-system around their all-in-one Google Play store. And of course, this certainly seems legal and above-board... but I'm not so sure that restricting access to knowledge unnecessarily is really 'doing no evil'. 

IP as an innovation system

(For the meat of the post, you can scroll down to the 4th paragraph)

While there are many justifications and theories of intellectual property, I'll be approaching IPR from the perspective that regardless of the theories/justifications of IP, it is the primary method of incentivising innovation in our world today. (Having said that, this approach does more or less fall under the 'utilitarian theory'). I'll also be ignoring the politics of IP and the developed-developing country issues - the picture below pretty much sums that bit up. I've actually already done a bit of both of those approaches over here. I'm not even looking at the fallout effect of a badly managed but well intentioned patent regime such as excess litigation and overburdened patent offices. For the textual part of my post today, I'm simply looking at the basic concept of patents and copyrights today and explaining what I think their problems are. 

Personalized blog-art credit to Madiha Tallat 

Do feel free to stop and admire the cartoon above.

Ok, So moving on.
What are innovations? Simply put, they are gains in current information or knowledge which optimally can be implemented in products/processes and allow for the further production/discovery of more information or knowledge. Defined as such, innovations are naturally very valued in society and any reasonable society would try to formulate systems for improving the rate of innovative activity. Our society, reasonable or not, has also formulated some systems towards this goal and these are largely encompassed under the heading of 'Intellectual Property Rights'. 

It is obvious that the spread of information and knowledge is fundamental for society's growth and development, therefore any restriction placed on this spread should necessarily be a justified one. Conceptually, this is what patents and copyrights are. Temporary restrictions on the spread of information/knowledge present so as to provide the innovator a time period within which s/he can capture rents for the production of that information, thus serving as an incentive for innovators.

So on the one hand, these temporary restrictions price out one sector of consumers and restrict the flow of information while on the other hand, these restrictions may be the incentives required to quickly bring these innovations to light. The emphasised portions are the key trade-offs in this equation. It's clear what the negative is but on the benefit side, it may not be so clear as to why I'm emphasizing how 'quickly' the innovations are brought to light. The reason for this is that given a certain amount of information and knowledge, it is only a matter of time before an innovation is made from that information. There is no practical way of measuring how long/short this duration may be. Which means there is no practical way of knowing how much incentive is required to bring about an innovation earlier than it would have otherwise taken.

And this is what is causing many of the problems in the patent as well as copyright world today.

Even without actually examining why 20 years was eventually chosen as the standard patent term, it is clear that in the best case scenario it was a best-guess as to what the term ought to be. To add to that uncertainty, the advent of the internet has certainly made a tremendous impact on the spread and accessibility of knowledge and information. With the amount of information available to anyone who has access to a computer and internet connection, the spread of ideas is happening at a much quicker rate in nearly all fields, thus rendering the 'best-guess' of 20 years even more moot.

Unfortunately, discussion and debate in the actual policy setting has been far from transparent in the IP world, with normative solutions for society going lower and lower on the priority list.

Admittedly, patents and copyrights are two very different beasts and as such, I'll discuss them separately.
Copyrights tend to have a 'moral' edge to them, in that, they are more often the result of creative application of someone's mind. The idea remains free for others to use, while the person expressing the idea gets 'ownership' over his particular form of expressing that idea, so it's easy to see why people find it inherently easy to believe that copyrights are justified. This 'inherent justification' also partly explains how copyright terms have been pushed senselessly from 14 years to a currently possible 100+ years. Copyright mostly applies to 'culture' heavy sectors, so it's not very easy to even vaguely estimate if there has been any net benefit or loss due to copyright. However, the fact remains that copyrights can and have been exploited continuously. It's been a long while since our education has been through the means of stories passed on to us. The written word is how we learn and how we are taught now.  If knowledge is valued, then there must be more than a 'less than vague' estimate of net benefit to society by restricting it. Copious copyright term extensions also apply to academic publications. Recently the Spiegal wrote about a study by economic historian Eckhard Höffner, which says that Germany's current industrial might is a spillover effect of the proliferation of academic papers allowed by the absence of copyrights for about 130 years after the superpower of the time (Great Britain) instituted them. In pertinent part from the study:

"Publishers in England exploited their monopoly shamelessly. New discoveries were generally published in limited editions of at most 750 copies and sold at a price that often exceeded the weekly salary of an educated worker. London's most prominent publishers made very good money with this system, some driving around the city in gilt carriages. Their customers were the wealthy and the nobility, and their books regarded as pure luxury goods. In the few libraries that did exist, the valuable volumes were chained to the shelves to protect them from potential thieves.

In Germany during the same period, publishers had plagiarizers -- who could reprint each new publication and sell it cheaply without fear of punishment -- breathing down their necks. Successful publishers were the ones who took a sophisticated approach in reaction to these copycats and devised a form of publication still common today, issuing fancy editions for their wealthy customers and low-priced paperbacks for the masses."

"This created a book market very different from the one found in England. Bestsellers and academic works were introduced to the German public in large numbers and at extremely low prices. "So many thousands of people in the most hidden corners of Germany, who could not have thought of buying books due to the expensive prices, have put together, little by little, a small library of reprints," the historian Heinrich Bensen wrote enthusiastically at the time.

The prospect of a wide readership motivated scientists in particular to publish the results of their research. In Höffner's analysis, "a completely new form of imparting knowledge established itself."" 

Hoffner's is the first study to look at the effects of copyright over a long time and the fact the Britain and Germany existed with and without copyright respectively made it much easier to compare. This period free of copyright laid the foundation for Germany's rapid industrial expansion soon after. Certainly other factors were involved in their continued expansion but the industrial foundation as well as approach to scholarly literature was already set.

So coming back to my point - restricting the spread of knowledge certainly requires strong justifications and strengthening a system with weak foundations seems incongruent with that. I'm not quite advocating no copyright, but it does stand to reason that copyright restrictions should be as minimal as possible.


Products/processes which receive patents on the other hand are generally considered more 'hard' drivers of innovation. This is because they have more tangible benefits to society. Modern IP policy however, has curiously landed on 20 years as the duration of a patent for any and all sectors of technology. This implies that all sectors of technology require the same amount of incentives for innovation. This, however, is simply not true.

Common business sense and wanting first mover advantage is often a huge driver in innovation. Simply put, no one wants to be left behind. Sufficient competition will nearly always lead to innovation. The only normative reasons to give exclusion rights over products/processes are when (a) first mover advantage is likely or is viewed as likely to be insufficient to regain capital expenses and/or (b) when innovation is unlikely without extra incentive due to non-capital related reasons such as market stagnation or contradictory interests.

Pharmaceuticals are the best example of the first scenario where first mover advantage is insufficient to regain capital expenses due to the quick and cheaper reverse engineering that can be done to produce generic drugs. However, pharmaceutical patents come with a host of other problems, which require much explanation on their own and which I'm likely to be highlighting in future posts.
Battery technology is probably the best example of the sector specific innovation stagnation and this is probably due to the fact that improvement of battery capability leads to selling less batteries... But I really don't see how the patent system is helping this problem? If anything, it is part of the problem here. If the incentives to innovate it were tied to the social value of the better batteries rather than to it's sales revenues, there would likely be very quick development in the field.

Let's leave this reasoning aside and look at yet another problem. That of lack of contextualization. Different countries have different domestic strengths. International trade is based on comparative advantage, yet when it comes to patent rights, countries are not allowed to choose sectors for which they feel stronger or weaker patent protection is required.

In other words, despite different incentives required for innovation in different sectors, and despite different countries having different priorities and levels of development, patent policy is broadly the same world over.

The IP system can and will be argued over and teased and pulled in different directions by clashing interest groups... However in my eyes at least, it seems this is not a battle that can be won. Stakeholder interests by default will continue to clash with one another and often unfairly so, in each of their eyes. One way or another though, thanks to the WTO TRIPS Agreement, IP is here to stay. If alternative innovation systems do come up, they will have to somehow bypass the IP system and carve out their own niche.