A colleague forwarded me an interesting column by Hofstra University Philosophy Professor K.A. Wallace. Typical
of a philosopher, it is a bit opaque and jumps from subject to subject with
awkward transitions. But a lot of compelling discussions are found within, thought-provoking discussions.

If
I read her correctly, she is saying:

1. The digital age has made it easier to access creative works.
2. Right now we are seeing that with commercial publishers and
   distributors.
3. Ideally this information would be disseminated in ways that cost
   less to institutions of higher learning.
4. A universal open access network needs to develop for the sharing of academic
   information.
5. The role of commercial publishers should be reduced.
6. Property rights can be eliminated in the name of public welfare.

First of all, if authors want to publish under an open access system, that is their right under copyright law and I applaud them for it. When I worked for a think tank, we gave all of our works away, made them available on our web site, and published a book under a Creative Commons license.

But as I've argued in other contexts, those authors who wish to surrender their rights shouldn't be able to take away those of other rightsholders by forcing them into the system. 

I
was with her for the first two points. However, in her dissatisfaction with commercial publishing's obvious success at expanding the reach of niche research at low cost, she focuses on the low cost of reproduction and distribution of digital works. This marginal cost fallacy — that creative works should be valued at or near zero because the marginal cost of production is zero — is common among those resistant to copyright, particularly in academia.

Any economist will tell you, however, that there are always fixed costs. A commenter in the post says "we write the articles." Well, yes. But imagine how awful — and useless from a research standpoint — would be a social science journal in which every article submitted was published, and without editing or peer review. These services — selection, editing, review — cost money, but they serve as a valuable filter that adds credibility to the work and helps a busy researcher decide where to spend her time researching. (Those authors not selected can always self-publish on an open access network that accepts self-published works.)

It's not unlike how some say blogs will replace newspapers. They're different beasts. Blogs by and large don't do original reporting, they're not edited, and bloggers don't report from Tibet or Darfur. If you look at the stories of The Washington Post that won Pulitzers the other day, many of them required significant man-hours, all of them were edited, and none of them could have been done by any existing blog. There remains a place for professionalism in this world, even in the digital age.

I respect Professor Wallace's goal of increasing access to knowledge, and it's a goal I share. I just happen to believe it can be done while still respecting the free market and authors' rights. 

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This entry was posted on Friday, April 11th, 2008 at 1:34 pm by Patrick Ross and is filed under economy, market forces. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.