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MIT Drops DRM-Laden Journal Subscription
Gibbs-Duhem writes with news that MIT has dropped its subscription to the Society of Automotive Engineers' web-based database of technical papers over the issue of DRM. The SAE refuses to allow any online access except through an Adobe DRM plugin that limits use and does not run on Linux or Unix. Also, the SAE refuses to let its papers even be indexed on any site but their own. SAE's use of DRM is peculiar to say the least, as they get their content for free from the researchers who actually do the work. And those researchers have choices as to where they send their work, and some of the MIT faculty are pretty vocal about it. From the MIT Library News: "'It's a step backwards,' says Professor Wai Cheng, SAE fellow and Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, who feels strongly enough about the implications of DRM that he has asked to be added to the agenda of the upcoming SAE Publication Board meeting in April, when he will address this topic."
I used to work for SAE a few years ago. Though I can't comment in any official capacity, I'd like to clear a couple of things up:
The comments here that suggest that SAE gets all this work for nothing are uninformed. It is true that researchers donate their time to standard creation, but SAE spends a great of money sponsoring the publication of technical articles, including but not limited to:
* Document standardization and editing - SAE employs many professional editors that turn papers into defined standards. If you'd ever seen the amount of time spent on a DTD for the standard, you'd understand the investment here.
* Conferences - SAE hosts and sponsors conferences and meetings with technical standard creators. The costs of bringing researchers together are not tiny, to say the least.
* Delivery systems - The IT systems and staff that deliver these standards in electronic format sure aren't free. The dead-tree formats were also associated with enormous production costs.
* Education - SAE sponsors quite a lot of educational programs for K-12 up into college, Formula SAE, Baja SAE, Aero Design SAE, Clean Snowmobile Challenge, or Supermileage. They also provide scholarships and loans to students. This is not cheap at all.
Regarding the DRM (this was implemented well after I left) - It was unfortunately not at all uncommon for our standards to be purchased online and then re-sold by various unsavory third parties. It was also not at all uncommon for the electronic versions of these technical documents to be downloaded and then placed on public FTP servers for download by lots of people who didn't buy them, in violation of the terms of sale.
As for indexing: SAE has a product line that involves selling this index in dead-tree format. This is the reason that SAE does not allow indexing of their technical document list. In my own personal opinion (not SAE's!), this never made any sense to me at all. Would you go to a restaurant that made you pay to look at the menu?
Anyway, probably a lot has changed since I left, but hopefully this gives everyone a bit of insight.
I've been an editor for an Elsevier journal, and I second everything the parent says, except for the web interface being freeware. That web interface - oh my God - is so bad that no self-respecting developer could have released it as freeware. It has got to be a consultant or in-house hack job. It is simply absurdly bad.
Strangely, the non-profit University of Chicago journals I've refereed for don't seem to have this problem, only the for-profit Elsevier ones. Make of that what you will.
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
And we do. For example, all the editors of the very prestigious but very expensive math journal Topology recently resigned. The same editors then started a new journal, Journal of Topology, with much lower prices. The researchers already do all the work anyway, so this is a much better arrangement.