E-Reserves Under Fire From Publishers

RackinFrackin writes "Publishers Weekly has a story about a copyright lawsuit lodged against several faculty members and a librarian at Georgia State University. The case, Cambridge University Press, et al. v. Patton et al., involves e-reserves, a practice of making electronic copies of articles available to students. From the article: 'Rather than make multiple physical copies, faculty now scan or download chapters or articles, create a single copy, and place that copy on a server where students can access it (and in some cases print, download, or share). Since the practice relies on fair use (creating a single digital copy, usually from a resource already paid for, for educational purposes), permission generally isn't sought, and thus permission fees aren't paid, making the price right for students strapped by the high cost of tuition and textbooks, as well as for libraries with budgets stretched thinner every year.'"

Comments

Textbook Publishers

[DaMattster]

Sarcastically speaking, I feel so sorry for the publishers losing out. They charge such unnecessarily exhorbitant prices and change maybe a word or two or chapter organization resulting in a new edition to obsolete the old. Maybe it is high time professors fought back against this extortion.

Re:Textbook Publishers

[p14-lda]

That is of course ignoring the professors who write the books for their courses and are happy to have new revisions every year to keep that part of their revenue in tact :)

Re:Textbook Publishers

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

Maybe you think they're exorbitant but many of us do not. I'm personally happy to pay $135 for a calculus book that I can turn around and sell for $30 when the semester is over since by then the entire field of mathematics will have been been rewritten. Publishers have to eat too, and beluga caviar with dodo eggs spread on the backs of beautiful hookers by chimp butlers don't come cheap!

Re:Textbook Publishers

[spire3661]

In most other industries this would be considered illegal as a clear conflict of interest.

Re:Textbook Publishers

[H0p313ss]

...beluga caviar with dodo eggs spread on the backs of beautiful hookers by chimp butlers...

I think you're doing it wrong.

Re:Textbook Publishers

[__aapopf3474]

From TFA:

"Indeed, to the uninitiated, scholarly publishing is a curious enterprise. Simplified, it works something like this: universities or the government subsidize a professor's research. The professor, who is required to publish frequently for professional advancement, gives his research to a scholarly publisher, usually for little or no money. That publisher, who adds value through editing, peer review, and production, assumes the copyright, packages, and sells the research back to the university at a markup. And those mark-ups have proven significant over time, especially as the digital age has fostered an explosion of new databases and resources."

In my department (Electrical Engineering), new faculty are offered a support package to get started and then the faculty go out and get funding. At least 51% of the funding they find is paid to the University as overhead. It is difficult for faculty who don't have external funding to attract grad students or pay for computers. The funding comes from the Government, but much of it comes from corporations.

In my experience, publishers no longer do any editing. I had an expensive text book on "Quality" and the author misquoted John Kennedy. How could this get by an editor? Authors submit camera ready text to academic publishers.

In my experience, peer review is managed by an unpaid faculty member who distributes material to other unpaid faculty members who distribute the material to unpaid students who do the review and pass the review back up the chain. This is actually very good because it gets students to review the work of others.

The reality is that academic publishing is a dead-end. Journals are in trouble. Conference proceedings and self-publishing of text books are on the rise. Recently, he only thing that I've heard faculty say that publishers provide is that publishers sometimes show up at conferences with a table of books which faculty browse. This seems like a weak basis for a business.

Reading the TFA, it seems like the publishers should just settle. Georgia changed their ways.

Re:Textbook Publishers

[MagicM]

Hooker caviar with chimp eggs spread on the backs of dodos by beluga butlers?

Re:Textbook Publishers

[GlassHeart]

You are, however, ignoring one problem on the other end. Copyright infringement is so cheap that it's not easy for publishers to compete, even if they were to price it "fairly". The iTunes Music Store is a successful example, but it was selling most of its songs at US$0.99 or so, which is cheap enough to make piracy seem like too much trouble. A textbook, even when reasonably priced, is not likely ever to be priced at a trivial sum.

I think the bigger problem is that each textbook in question is a little monopoly in the class you have to attend, which allows the publisher of that textbook to charge high prices. If courses were required to designate at least two or three textbooks from different publishers as "official", then we might see some price competition. Or, if professors were banned from unnecessarily requiring the newest edition, competition from earlier editions would serve a similar role in the market.

Re:Textbook Publishers

[DragonWriter]

In most other industries this would be considered illegal as a clear conflict of interest.

Outside of some areas of government work and a handful of tightly-regulated industries, "clear conflicts of interest" aren't illegal, and are, in fact, fairly common. Certain conflicts of interest may, while not illegal in and of themselves, be prohibted by particular contracts (particularly employment contracts), but most aren't even there (for instance, its a pretty clear conflict of interest to work for one company and to own stock in a competitor -- if its voting stock, there is a double conflict of interest -- but except in the case of an executive-level employee, this would rarely be prohibited.)

Re:Textbook Publishers

[Xonstantine]

Cost of summer Microeconomics class at the local juco: $110, including fees.

Cost of new economics textbook for class at juco bookstore: $140.

Something is seriously dislocated when the book costs more than the course.

Re:Textbook Publishers

[operagost]

I had an expensive text book on "Quality" and the author misquoted John Kennedy.

On page 135, it should say, "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." Instead it reads, "We eat beluga caviar with dodo eggs spread on the backs of beautiful hookers by chimp butlers."

Re:Textbook Publishers

[Xonstantine]

Yes. The government is paying most of your tuition.

You misspelled taxpayers.

Speaking of which, I paid $5500 in property taxes last years (and a big chunk of that goes to the juco).

Re:Textbook Publishers

[rcuhljr]

let me help you with the reading. if you bought stuff from the bookstore. Although very few of the books we used in undergrad were actually on resale site, when you go to a sub 2000 attendance college there's a good chance you aren't on the big buy lists. Normally you'd buy books from friends who'd taken the class previously provided you didn't get version owned. Even then the savings wouldn't always be phenomenal since you'd need to split the difference between the price the store payed to buy them back, and the cost of used books at the store.

Re:Textbook Publishers

[uniquegeek]

The whole %0.5 of it, or whatever it is? Unlikely.

My University had a God-like math professor who wrote many texts. He encouraged students to buy the book, photocopy it, and return it. He said he barely got anything for them, and he would rather have the students in his class to have the book and be able to follow along in the lecture. "$150 is just stupid, I have no say in it."

Re:Textbook Publishers

[QuantumRiff]

Why not? There is little change from one revision to the next. In fact, one large, often quoted cost of the textbooks is the shipping costs. Another is printing costs. Another is storage. (our college didn't like to buy back books that weren't used the very next term, since they didn't have anywhere to store them) How much do you think it costs to ship 500 calculus textbooks to a college? One would think with no expensive full color printing and binding, along with almost no distribution or warehouse costs, the price should be a small fraction of what it was.

Heck, without the bookstore marking up the cost to pay for their costs (office space, salaries, etc) and no distribution and storage costs, you really just have a author, some marketing and IT costs for distribution, and of course, editing and proof reading.

Re:Textbook Publishers

[twidarkling]

Actually, I'm pretty sure that's more to prevent insider trading (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insider_trading), which can be illegal most places.

Re:Textbook Publishers

[bigbigbison]

People always say this but I'm now a phd student and the only time I ever had a class where we used a professor's book was one class where the book was actually out of print so he just gave us photocopies of it. What subjects are people taking where this is happening?

Re:Textbook Publishers

[twidarkling]

Can it really be true that he had no say in it? I mean, not directly in normal circumstances, but the copyright belonged to him, right? Was it legal for him to tell you to copy it? If so, couldn't he have put that on the first page?

I'm not nitpicking, I'm actually curious how all that shit happens.

If it's anything like the University Press that I worked for, no, he couldn't put it on the first page, there's a standard copyright assertion/disclaimer that the place will use. No, it probably wasn't *strictly* legal for him to be saying that, and technically, it's not his copyright.

That's right. It's not his copyright. The entire point of the contract that an author and publisher sign is a temporary assignment of copyright for specific purposes, generally the publisher holds it for the first run, and maybe some subsequent reprints, until the book is declared out of print, and then the copyright reverts to the author.

This is pretty much necessary under current business practices, since deals for advertising, excerpting, and even designing and printing would all be kneecapped by having to return to the author constantly for written approval for every change and deal made. And since I've seen authors go incommunicado for literally months at a time, publishing would grind to a halt.

eBooks will have to change the formula slightly, since the book will never need to technically go out of print, so it'll probably see a move to term-periods of copyright assignment. Say, a publisher gets it for 5 years or some such before reversion.

As for if one publisher refused, another be willing? Not as likely as you think. Publishers in a field tend to talk to each other a lot, and find out things, and keep tabs on each other, and very few are willing to take on something that's going to be a clear loss in publishing, which with an author looking to give the book away, would probably do it. You'd be stuck doing self-publishing, and even for people who are subject matter experts, self-published books are a damn nightmare. Typos and awkward phrasing slip through, organization is horrible, there's usually no fact checking and source attribution checking, all because the person assumes they know the topic that well, and mistakes happen.

A large, heavily illustrated book costs about $20 to get printed at a professional printer if you do a print run of 1,000+. It's not the printing that costs the money, it's the original research, follow-up research, and editing that cost the money. The advanced-level Ukrainian language text book that my Press printed took the author five years of in-class and at-home work to create before she ever brought it to us, and then it took nearly another two years to get it printed. It's also the stuff that no one ever thinks of that costs the big money too. The book had hundreds of images that had to be converted to print quality, some starting out as crappy web images, some as massive posters. That all needs to be done out-of-house usually too.

Textbooks are fucking expensive to make, and the biggest bandits are usually the college bookstores to boot, especially when they buy back and resell used copies. If you're in a college town, check independent bookstores in your area. If you have the ISBN, you can usually get them to order it in (as far as I know, every University Press has a deal with at least one distributor, and most textbook publishers do too), and it'll usually be cheaper. Amazon is also a good bet, though shipping can be an issue.

Re:Textbook Publishers

[twidarkling]

So, don't compete then. We don't need textbook publishers anymore.

Yeah, you do. Maybe not dedicated companies, but you still need publishers for textbooks.

Re:Textbook Publishers

[Gadget_Guy]

In the strange world of academia, the main way that you can show your worth is by being published by recognised journals and book publishers. Often it is a requirements of working at an institution. Self publishing and e-publishing would not be accepted for this. It seems that doing what is best for the students is secondary to building prestige for universities.

Re:Textbook Publishers

[supercrisp]

This comes up frequently. Does anyone who says this have ANY idea of how little royalties are for these books? Does anyone ever stop to consider that the prof who wrote the book might well believe that the book he or she wrote is the BEST book in the field? (Of course it may be crap, but the author is likely to be convinced of its value.) I regularly assign students to read things I've written--not books, mind you, but brief essays or other preparatory materials. The only difference is no money is changing hands. But, if and when I have enough material, it will become a book I will then likely assign. The way I see it, I am thereby freed up to talk about OTHER things, such as nuances of the material, recent developments, or applications. Finally, I can't imagine that anyone teaching is doing it for the money. If you're in the sciences, you likely are or could be making much more in industry. In the humanities, you're not going to be making money no matter where you go--and you knew that starting out. This tiresome idea that the prof is price-gouging students is why faculty can't provide simple services like bringing in a box of bluebooks, folder, or what-have-you and asking a nickel apiece for them. Instead students have to make an extra trip to the campus bookstore to get charged more for the same item. Anyway, seriously, at their most malevolent, for the majority, faculty are indifferent to students. But the greatest part of us actually like and care about the people we teach.

For those keeping score at home...

[professorguy]

Does an educational publishing house exist to disseminate information to the people who will use it to improve our society? Or does it merely gobble up the maximum amount of money without regard to the impact on society?

Well, I guess now we know.

Re:For those keeping score at home...

[uniquegeek]

I wouldn't say so. Everyone's told they must go to university or college to get a good job, so if the university has a captive audience, why wouldn't they charge what they can get away with?

In my campus bookstore, they are selling some books at 5% or 10% over list price... plus they make sure you don't get the booklist until three days before classes start. No ISBNs on the list. They're sure not doing this for the convenience of students.

Relevant TED Talk

[slifox]

I just watched a very good and quite relevant TED talk by Lawrence Lessig, about fair use and the freedoms that are being eroded by excessive copyright legislation

I encourage you to watch it too, even though it's a bit long (20min).

Re-examining the remix
http://www.ted.com/talks/lessig_nyed.html

IANAL but I think the school will lose

[Microsift]

They are basically acting like a publisher. Compare to Basic Books v. Kinko's

Re:IANAL but I think the school will lose

[Sycraft-fu]

Look up fair use. There's a lot of factors that go in to if use is fair, but most of them are such that educational use is often fair use. You probably have the widest latitude of all when it comes to using material for educational purposes.

Also the e-reserves system is one well founded in history. Schools would allow a professor to place a book on reserve for students. The students could then go and check out the book and copy the relevant section for the class. The whole point of the reserve system was that the book was held at the library for use for copying for a class, people could not check it out generally and take it home.

This has gone on for a very long time and been seen as fair. All e-reserves do is update this to the 21st century. The relevant material is digitized and students can access it if they are in the appropriate class.

Publishers need to stop being so fucking greedy when it comes to schools.

Re:The only thing I learned in college...

[Anonymous Coward]

Only thing? I'd ask for my money back.

Re:The only thing I learned in college...

[Anonymous Coward]

He majored in bitching about textbook costs.

Re:Why do schools even buy their own books?

[Cwix]

The professors write the book ,send it to a publisher for editing and what not, and the book is sold back to the SAME SCHOOL, and others. Thats how it works right now. As far as Im concerned, these professors should forward their books to the lit department, have some undergrads edit, and pretty it up. then post it on the schools server. Then schools could share their librarys with other schools, so every school will have available on its server every fucking book they need. Problem solved.

This hits close to home

[MalHavoc]

I did RTA, and I didn't see the name of the E-Reserves product Georgia is using, but I am betting it is the same one they sort-of open sourced a few years ago, and that I am currently maintaining at my own institution. I am in the middle of building a new E-reserves system because the one that Georgia State created is in a bit of a need of a rewrite in order to work on newer versions of PHP.

This is a big deal. Institutions often pay incredible amounts of money to provide library catalog services, and reserves are a huge part of any course system. Instructors often bring stuff into our library, from their own collection -- a magazine article, a couple of photos, whatever -- and now, more than ever, they exist only in electronic form (videos, PDF files, etc). You have to put these things some place.

This stuff needs to be worked out. I see a few people already posting about how expensive college is... the last thing I'd want to see is the costs of license fees for copyright being passed on to students. That's seriously suck.

As a GSU grad student...

[Nidi62]

Screw Cambridge University Press. I just lost my assitantship(read: tuition waiver) because we don't have enough funding in my department. If we had to pay even to read every single copy of an article, most of the graduate departments would be gone. In any case, how is this any different from making copies out of a physical book in a library? If they are going to go after us, they should be going after every single library that holds their books and also owns a copier, since apparently that is costing them fees as well. Where they say "Rather than make multiple physical copies, faculty now scan or download chapters or articles", they really mean "Rather than BUY multiple physical copies, faculty now scan or download chapters or articles". Oh, yeah, and remind me never to publish with Cambridge University Press.

Re:The only thing I learned in college...

[AnonymousClown]

You know, when I was in school, my textbooks were always over $100 a piece - business textbooks - and some were less than 200 pages. Now, I'm pretty sure that there isn't much groundbreaking research being done in business where a textbook has to be updated every decade let alone every year. But yet, we had to have the latest edition. My group psychology textbook has shit from the 60s up to the 80s.

Then there's the cost. Why do much? Yet, graze in the computer programming section of any book store and you'll see up to date books that are less than $50.

But let's go back to business. There are Schaum Outline's for just about every topic and they cover every thing that's in a textbook for less than $20. It's the same with the first couple of years of science and engineering, math, english, economics, etc...

Why aren't they used?

In my school career, there were only 2 professors that used their own book and one of them just had us get a Kinko's version of his book at cost.

College costs are getting to the point where an average kid can't afford it. And no, borrowing money to pay for school doesn't count as affording it.Textbooks just add to the burden.

Re:The only thing I learned in college...

[Attila Dimedici]

Wow, you missed the much more imprtant lesson....those who run colleges and universities are greedy bastards.
Ove the last 30 years textbook prices have risen at a rate faster than inflation, over the same time period college tuition has risen faster than textbook prices.

Oh, crap!

[Tetsujin]

"E-Reserves" in dangr? Must I now cut back on utilization of a particularly common glyph in Anglican writing? If too much unthoughtful inclusion of this glyph occurs, will total lack of futur supply occur? How can communication work with such a handicap? Can you and I sumday go back to normal utilization of this glyph without killing its supply?

Simple solution

[Locke2005]

Open source all course materials and stop fucking around with for-profit publishers.

Re:Why do schools even buy their own books?

[netruner]

Now how will all of the no-value-added middle men make their livings if this type of philosophy takes hold?

No, no no no no... wait a moment there...

[blind biker]

Publishers know one thing: don't fuck with tenured professors. These guys have contributed a lot of material (both as articles and as books) to the publishers, from which they gain usually very little to nothing. But the profs have the attitude that they'll send a copy of the article to any scholar that asks for it. Some even have automated e-mail systems which send the article in an automated e-mail. And publishers always let them do that, because they know what is the true source of their bread and butter, and know better than piss them off. Ask any tenured prof if they are worried that the publishing hose will come after them for distributing copies of their articles; their attitude is "Bring it on, make my day."

Senior scientists HATE giving up copyrights to the text and every picture they publish in the article, to the journal, without getting anything in return - not to mention that they are the authors of the whole article, and must even carefully format it according to the capricious guidelines of the journal! Oh yeah, and the peer-review is done by other unpaid scientists. People are furious and anger is boiling. Does this publishing house really want to stir this nest of angry wasps? The UC boycott of NPG didn't come out from a vacuum. Cambridge University Press could find itself on the receiving end of something similarly unpleasant. Yes, they are very prestigious and with a long tradition - but so does Nature Publishing Group.

If the situation blows up to a sufficient degree, we might see a revolutionary change towards copylefted, openly accessible scientific papers and notebooks. Public Library of Science is moving in that direction, and I can only hope that the movement/trend picks up momentum and steamrolls the greedy publishing houses and journals.

Oh crap. And a comparison.

[supercrisp]

Well, there goes my ability to save my students trips to the reserve room. Like many others, I slap things on Blackboard (POS) or other CMS. Now that'll no doubt be prohibited. And here's the comparison. I had to sign away the rights to my dissertation in order to graduate. Why? Digitizing. Oh sweet irony! The library has a corp come in to do the digitizing of dissertations. That costs, so the library signed a deal where the corp gets the right to disseminate the material with little or no money coming back to me or the school. They digitize my work and then get to sell it to others for to cover their costs. Forever. If I become well-known, and my work becomes valuable (I should be so lucky!), they'll have my work to peddle in perpetuity. What's the point of comparison? The sore feeling in my bottom, and your bottom, and the bottoms of students and faculty across the nation.