Academic Journals: The Most Profitable Obsolete(过时的)Technology in History A. The music business was killed by Napster; movie theaters were derailed by digital streaming; traditional magazines are in crisis mode—yet in this digital information wild west: academic journals and the publishers who own them are posting higher profits than nearly any sector of commerce. B. Academic publisher Elsevier, which owns a majority of the influential academic journals, has higher operating profits than Apple. In 2013, Elsevier posted 39 percent profits, according to Heather Morrison, assistant professor at the University of Ottawa’s School of Information Studies in contrast to the 37 percent profit that Apple displayed. C. This lucrative nature of academic publishing comes at a price—and that weight falls on the shoulders of the full higher education community which is already bearing the burden of significantly decreasing academic budgets. "A large research university will pay between $3-3.5 million a year in academic subscription(订阅)fees—the majority of which goes to for-profit academic publishers," says Sam Gershman, a postdoctoral fellow at MIT who assumes his post as an assistant professor at Harvard next year. In contrast to the exorbitant prices for access, the majority of academic journals are produced, reviewed, and edited on a volunteer basis by academics who take part in the tasks for tenure and promotion. D. "Even the Harvard University Library, which is the richest university library in the world, sent out a letter to the faculty saying that they can no longer afford to pay for all the journal subscriptions," says Gershman. While this current publishing environment is hard on large research institutions, it is wreaking havoc(造成大破坏) on small colleges and universities because these institutions cannot afford access to current academic information. This is clearly creating a problematic situation. E. Paul Millette, director of the Griswold Library at Green Mountain College, a small 650 student environmental liberal arts college in Vermont, talks of the enormous pressures access to academic journals have placed on his library budgets. "The cost-of-living has increased at 1.5 percent per year yet the journals we subscribe to have consistent increases of 6 to 8 percent every year." Millette says he cannot afford to keep up with the continual increases and the only way his library can afford access to journal content now is through bulk databases. Millette points out that database subscription seldom includes the most recent, current material and publishers purposefully have an embargo of one or two years to withhold the most current information so libraries still have a need to subscribe directly with the journals. "At a small college, that is what we just don’t have the money to do. All of our journal content is coming from the aggregated database packages—like a clearing house so to speak of journal titles," says Millette. F. "For Elsevier it is very hard to purchase specific journals—either you buy everything or you buy nothing," says Vincent Lariviere, a professor at University of Montreal. Lariviere finds that his university uses 20 percent of the journals they subscribe to and 80 percent are never downloaded. "The pricing scheme is such that if you subscribe to only 20 percent of the journals individually, it will cost you more money than taking everything. So people are stuck." Where To Go: G. "Money should be taken out of academic publishing as much as possible. The money that is effectively being spent by universities and funding agencies on journal access could otherwise be spent on reducing tuition, supporting research, and all things that are more important than paying corporate publishers," says Gershman. John Bohannon, a biologist and Science contributing correspondent, is in agreement and says, "Certainly a huge portion of today’s journals could and should be just free. There is no value added in going with the traditional model that was built on paper journals, with having people whose full time job was to deal with the journal, promote the journal and print the journal, and deal with librarians. All that can now be done essentially for free on the internet." H. Although the prior clearly sounds like the path toward the future, Bohannon says from his vantage point the prior is not one-size-fits-all: "The most important journals will always look pretty much like they do today because it is actually a really hard job." Bohannon finds that the more broad journals such as Science, Nature, and Proceeding of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) will always need privatized funding to complete the broad publication tasks. Another Option I. "A better approach to academic publishing is to cut out the whole notion of publishing. We don’t really need journals as traditionally conceived. The primary role of traditional journals is to provide peer review and for that you don’t need a physical journal—you just need an editorial board and an editorial process," says Gershman. J. As higher education is redefined to meet the needs and affordability required of the 21st century certainly the most basic functions of sharing academic research need to be retooled. There is no reason an academic publisher should have such a significantly different economic picture from standard publishers. The stark contrast is troubling as it tells just how far from reality our higher education system has traversed. Correspondingly, there is no reason universities should pay $3.5 million to have access to peer-reviewed data. This academic conversation is society’s conversation—and it is time that the digital revolution level one last playing field: because we, the people, deserve access. The profit rates of academic publishers and standard publishers shouldn’t be distinctly different.