Sci Pub’s Epstein Files, Part 2
Has SPARC ruined libraries?
To look for answers to the questions, “How much of Epstein’s money made its way into scientific publishing P&Ls?” and “Who might be on that list?” I went back to my old school, the Alma Mater of the Nation, William & Mary.
All alumni have remote access privileges to JSTOR and Project MUSE, you just need to identify yourself through the same portal they have for registering for homecoming events and tracking your “giving.” I need to use other stuff, so it’s handy that I’m also a local.
A state school, its library is open to the public — I can wander in whenever I want and use all of their online resources through IP authentication on my laptop, and I only need my driver’s license to borrow materials.
If you want to see what we call “the Automated Box of Confusion” looks like going full tilt, go to a university library IRL. Because the industry has over-indexed on Open Access (OA) and under-indexed on, well, indexing, curation, and other services and tools that add value through context, the library is now a dangerous place to do research — particularly on a summer Friday when both the air conditioning and the single-sign on aren’t working.
I use Scopus because it gives me the breadth and details for the work that I do. On this day I couldn’t get in because of something or other authentication related — I knew more than the Research Librarian. I had the desk kids call down from upstairs that it was unlikely to be resolved without crossing a few time zones, so she set me up at a terminal PC that was already logged in and gave me a thumb drive so I could take my files home with me.
The other reason I use Scopus so much is that W&M cancelled their Web of Science subscription a few years ago. These are the tough decisions that librarians and consortia have to make in this decades-long, forever war labelled a “serials crisis,” right? It has turned publishers and information services producers that charge money for products with a purpose into casualties and adversaries.
In exchange for what? Unlimited access to free stuff, with nobody accountable for it.