Paying for nothing?

Andrew Brown, in the Guardian, writes:

Scientific journals are a notorious racket: because they are essential tools for the professions that use them, they can charge pretty much what they like.

The late Robert Maxwell was the first person to understand this, and though he is remembered as a newspaper proprietor, he built his fortune on scientific publishing with Pergamon Press.

University libraries, and even others that have any pretence to scholarship, now spend fortunes on learned journals. Elsevier, the leading publisher in the field, offered 1,749 journals last year at an average annual subscription price of nearly £2,400, and each one is indispensable to specialists.

Of course, the contributors are paid nothing.The effect of this, as many disgruntled radicals have pointed out, is that the government pays universities to conduct research for the public benefit;the measure of this research is publication in peer-reviewed specialist journals; the peer review is done for free, by academics employed and paid by universities. The results are then sold back to the universities who paid for the research in the first place.

This is bad value for governments. It's also extremely bad for anyone outside a university who may want to learn, and that's a situation the web has made more tantalising. Almost all these journals are indexed and references to them will be found on Google Scholar, PubMed Central and anywhere else you look beyond Wikipedia.

So the truth is out there. But it will cost you. I just paid $32 for a printout of one piece and this is by no means exceptional.

I could not agree more.

Many thanks to Brian Easton, who pointed me at this fascinating opinion piece. I shall be looking for more from Andrew Brown.

Writing in secret

One dark evening, in the depths of an otherwise deserted university, a mathematics professor was working secretly on his latest attempt at a novel. In an absentminded moment he sent a particularly erotic chapter to the faculty secretary's printer. Horrified, he raced down the corridor, to see the steamy passages appear one by one in her print tray -- behind a locked grille. A frantic plea to security followed, but finally, to his immense relief, Manil Suri was able to retrieve the incriminating stuff.

Professor Suri was a closet writer, who was convinced that his career was down the tube if his academic fellows ever found out. In an interesting and amusing story published in the Washington Post, he reveals the trials and tribulations of his secret life. What is probably even more amazing is what happened when his first novel was published, and the news of his double life broke.

Tragic loss for book distributor

Jean Srnecz, senior vice president (merchandizing) of the book distributor Baker and Taylor, was one of the victims of a plane crash in Buffalo last night.

Multitudes of people have browsed library shelves without realizing that the books are there because of the distributing firm. Baker and Tayor distributes book, music, and DVDs to schools and libraries all over the world.

The publishing world will miss the well-liked Jean Srnecz, who was described by a spokesperson for the company as "the face of B&T to the publishing industry."

Forty-nine people died when Continental commuter flight 3407 crashed into a house near Buffalo, NY.

Blagojevich memoirs?

Breaking news from Spy Mouse:

Impeached & disgraced former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has just been spotted in the lobby of the Flatiron Building, home of Macmillan publishing ...

New book from Sri Lankan author

Press release follows.

Dear Joan,

You will be pleased to know that my third novel The Sweet and Simple Kind will be launched in London today by Little, Brown the UK publishers. This is exciting, since it's the first time a novel first published in Sri Lanka is being published in Britain.

Canadian and Australian publication dates will shortly follow, so you will be hearing from Hachette Australia pretty soon. I've asked them to send you a review copy, and hope you will enjoy the book when you read it.

Very best wishes,

Yasmine Gooneratne

Dramatic cuts at HarperCollins

BREAKING NEWS: HarperCollins lays off staff, closes division

The surge of bad news has now washed up to the doors of HarperCollins in New York. The Collins division (which specializes in nonfiction) has been chopped, and staff dispersed or laid off.

Spy Mouse adds that all spring book tours have been cancelled. Children's division is moving to the main building. Editor Brenda Bowen is out, and Bowen Press is closed

"Over the last several months, the unstable economy has had a significant impact on businesses and consumer spending," wrote Harpers CEO Brian Murray in a memo issued February 10. "Our industry is not immune to these amrket forces, and there is increasing pressure on us, along with our retail and wholesale partners, to adjust."

Having stated the obvious, he announced the starting cuts. Among those leaving are Steve Ross, who worked on President Obama's Audacity of Hope at Crown before moving to head Collins in 2007.

Also going is Lisa Gallagher, publisher of the William Morrow division.

This bad news follows a strong decade in which CEO Jane Friedman (forced out last summer) had aggressively recruited Ross and other top talent, including Robert Miller (ex Hyperion) and Jonathan Burnham (from Miramax Books).

Both of these gentlemen remain with Harpers.

So far.

Recommended reading from Old Salt Blog

Richard Spilman, on his nautical book blog, features a glowing review of Defying Empire, Trading with the Enemy in Old New York, by Thomas Truxes.

He says, "The book describes the widespread trading with the French by New York merchants during the French and Indian Wars, as the conflict was known in the colonies. The trade, as far as the merchants were concerned, was business as usual. To the Crown and particularly to the military it was little short of treason.

"Defying Empire is a meticulously researched and gripping account of a largely overlooked period of history. Definitely worth checking out." Read more.

JK Rowling knighted

In France, that is. The BBC announces today that the Harry Potter author has been created a Knight of the Legion of Honour, France's highest civilian award.

Speaking in fluent French, JK Rowling thanked President Nicolas Sarkozy at the presentation ceremony in Paris, and apologized to the crowd for giving the evil nemesis of the series a French name. "Voldemort" means either thief or flight of death, which seems wonderfully appropriate. However, she assures her reading public that that bad guy is 100% English, and is grateful to the French for not holding a grudge.

And the President gracefully returned that he is grateful to her for getting French kids to read again.

Rowling received another accolade this very same week -- the highest of compliments from no less than Stephen King, who thinks she's a really good writer as well as being almost as successful as he is. The book blog of the Baltimore Sun reveals that in an interview with USA Today King slammed the newest mega-seller, Stephanie Meyer (who made vampires sexy), saying that she "can't write a damn," unlike Rowling, who is really good.

He also took aim at James Patterson, who is undoubtedly comforted by the news -- also reported by the BBC -- that he is the most borrowed author in British libraries. (One of the Harry Potters is the most borrowed single book.)

A very Interesting Life

The Oxford Dictionary of Biography has a more-than-interesting life featured today.

This is of a favorite character of mine, Ann Jane Thornton. I wrote about her -- and the ballad she inspired -- in She Captains, my study of enterprising females in the history of seafaring.

I will unfold a circumstance that does to love belong

Concerning of a pretty maid who ventur'd we are told

Across the briny ocean as a female sailor bold.

In February 1835, 16-year-old Ann Jane Thornton was summoned by the Lord Mayor of London, who had read about her strange career at sea. He wondered if she had been mistreated, so also summoned her erstwhile boss, Captain McIntire of the Sarah.

He had met Ann in St. Andrews in North America, McIntire testified. She had been dressed as a sailor, and he had given her the job of cook and steward, for the fair wage of nine dollars a month under the impression that she was a lad. The crew, he said, had been suspicious about that, on account of she wouldn't sink her grog like a man. Then they glimpsed her rounded form as she washed herself in her berth.

Her sex was then discovered which the secret did unfold

And the captain gaz'd with wonder on the female sailor bold

Well, the ship was in the middle of the Atlantic, the sea was rugged, and McIntire needed every hand, so he told her to carry on as before. The crew was unhappy about that, because she couldn't work like a man, they reckoned, even when helped along with the occasional clout. Ann made no complaints, and McIntire had nothing to complain about, either. She would run up to furl the topgallant sail in any kind of weather, he said, and in his opinion would make a capital seaman -- if a man.

With pitch and tar her hands were hard, tho' once like velvet soft

She weighed the anchor, heav'd the lead and boldly went aloft

Just one and thirty months she braved the tempest we are told

And always did her duty, did the female sailor bold

The Lord Mayor was naturally intrigued. Why had she chosen this strange career? Ah, it was love - love was the problem. At the tender age of 13 she had become besotted with an American shipmaster, Alexander Burk, and when he sailed she dressed as a cabin boy and worked her passage to join him -- to find that he had died.

That her love had been dead some time they to her did unfold

Which very near broke the heart, of this female sailor bold

To get home to Ireland, Ann had shipped on a couple of vessels as cook, but it wasn't until she met McIntire that she found a craft that was heading in the right direction. But now she was stranded in London -- because she hadn't been paid. McIntire had weasled out of it, claiming that the law only required him to pay seamen, not sea-ladies. Profoundly touched, the Mayor gave her enough money to rejoin her father in Donegal, and that is the last we hear of her.

It was love caused all her troubles and hardships we are told

May she rest at home contented now, the female sailor bold.

Maybe the ODB will publish the interesting life of Elizabeth Stephens next. She was another to go to sea as a cook, and do a seaman's duties, too, only she didn't cross dress to do it. She went to court in December 1821 to file a suit against Captain Chandler, master of the Jane and Matilda, for monies dues for three voyage between England and Spain. He, like McIntire, got away with it because of her sex. Nothing in the law said that he had to pay a woman for doing a man's work.

Think about it. If getting one's rightful pay depended on being taken for a man, it was a good reason for cross-dressing -- and for being sure not to be found out.

Replace the newspaper with the kindle?

Silicon Alley Insider (Digital Business, live!), Nicholas Carlson, has done some arithmetic, and reckons it would be cheaper for the New York Times to send everyone an amazon kindle than print and deliver the paper each day.

Not that he recommends it to the publisher, but after doing his sums he came up with a figure of $644 million delivery costs per year. This is on the basis that the NYT spends $63 million per quarter on raw material and $148 million on wages and benefits. (What about the trucks that deliver the bundles to the stands? And the man who tosses the paper on your stoop?)

In a recent open letter NYT spokesperson Catherine Mathis said that there are 630,000 loyal readers who have faithfully subscribed for more than two years.

Sending all those people a free kindle would cost a little less than half, apparently.

What Carlson hasn't factored in is that the NYT comes online everyday, so is already absolutely free. One wonders how they do it.