Steve Wheeler, un ejemplo a seguir

Steve Wheeler, profesor de tecnología educativa de la Universidad de Plymouth, ha anunciado recientemente en su blog la intención de no publicar más en revistas de pago y hacerlo solamente en las de libre acceso. ¿Las razones? Las obvias, las que todos sabemos. Copio aquí abajo dos párrafos de su blog:

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.

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.