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Univ. of California Faculty May Boycott Nature Publisher
Marian the Librarian writes "Nature Publishing Group (NPG), which publishes the prestigious journal Nature along with 67 affiliated journals, has proposed a 400% increase in the price of its license to the University of California. UC is poised to just say no to exorbitant price gouging. If UC walks, the faculty are willing to stage a boycott; they could, potentially, decline to submit papers to NPG journals, decline to review for them and resign from their editorial boards."
Form a cooperative association. Create an on-line journal. Hire staff sufficient to cover the costs of administration. Charge dues sufficient to cover the cost of administration. Let publishers competitively bid for the right to print and sell hard copies (if any want to). Elect a board of governors sufficient to ensure that only top quality stuff gets published.
The current situation is parasitical and symbiotic--but it's becoming less symbiotic.
They should take advantage of the technology and displace the parasite.
Not that I agree with the massive tuition hikes, but the difference here is that the journal is getting most of it's content and editing for free. It would be like the UC tuition rising despite all the professors and janitors working for free. Also some journals actually charge your for publishing articles. It cost me a $1000 to publish in an IOP journal...and by me I mean the taxpayer since I work on a DOE experiment.
I agree. In my discipline, a nature of science paper will get you huge attention from the university administration and bureaucrats in your funding agency. However, your colleagues who research things close to you will be suspicious because one has to simplify your findings and leave important qualifying statements out in order to have the paper be understandable by a general audience. I've seen more than one Nature or Science paper whose results were a little too convenient or cute and not surprisingy were later found to be totally bogus. It's not that bogus results don't happen in other journals, that's part of the scientific process, but when it's published in science or nature, a lot of people not in your field tend to believe it.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
How did that retort get moderated insightful? It's far more clueless than the post he's responding to, which as least has its heart in the right place. Every second podcast at Econtalk has a long seventh inning stretch on a Hayekian view of capitalism cut _exactly_ from this mold.
If you're taking the grand view of what capitalism requires, small government is not on the list. Twenty years ago it used to be said that Russians understood capitalism better than Americans, because they could actually define it, and list the institutions it entails (in a negative light).
These days no one actively debates the grand view of capitalism. The active debate is about capitalism as a mainspring of wealth creation and the role of government to A) abet or B) hinder the golden goose. In the blue trunks: free market fundamentalism. In the red trunks: liberal society and justice for all.
Its a dearly held tenant of the invisible-hand contingent that markets are able to solve allocation problems though the pricing system that a centralized system could never properly manage, because the required information can't be collected at a central point, unless one waves a magic wand to approximate the utility function of people not present to speak for themselves. That kind of sucks.
It was Stiglitz who showed that the magical ability of markets to solve allocation problems through the price mechanism breaks down under conditions of asymmetrical information. *If* you have price transparency (and a few other things) markets can do an excellent job where government can't.
What you end up with is a system where the vigorous new enterprise favours price transparency (which permits greater economic mobility) while the incumbent corporations do everything in their power to debase price transparency (telecoms industry, media industry, to name just a few).
I don't trust the views of anyone who doesn't think that information transparency leads to a more effective and vigorous market economy. But then I believe that wealth should be earned rather than squatted upon. I know, it's a radical idea.
I was reading some commentary on the media business, including How to Save the News which is interesting, but didn't impress me. One of the articles mentioned Bertrand competition, which suggests that in the absence of product differentiation, the product will end up selling at marginal production cost. (I'm not an economist, so sue me if I didn't get that phrase quite right.)
The Atlantic article goes on an on without mentioning the core point: why do people volunteer themselves to have their purchasing preferences manipulated by visual images in the first place? If ad revenue represents 80% of a newspaper's income, how does the effect the nature of the story reported? Is it to inform the reader, or to create a warm context for associated display ads? The theory of advertising impressions is that you get the viewer into a receptive emotional state, and then burn your image into the viewers amygdala while under the influence of the warm glow. Hence all the Superbowl ads, which are beamed at men awash in vicarious sexual potency. Not such a good model for funding an insightful report on genocide in Somalia.
I'm all for a world with far greater price transparency. It would weed out many of the people who wish to live fat lifestyles without ever creating much of value. Opportunities for value creation have never been better. Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing more of the carpet baggers bagging carpets until they change their ways.
I think a marketplace which maximizes informed choice on *both* sides of every transactions could work small economic miracles. Big business believes in such a market until they don't. Big business believes in small government until they require a big bailout. This is just wealthy peopl