E-access is the Digital Environment a Barrier to

E-access: is the Digital Environment a Barrier to Access, or: Hannibal Rising? Phil Sykes

E-access: is the digital environment a barrier to access? • Well, it really shouldn’t be…. • But what about the digitally disenfranchised? • In academia the situation is complicated, partly because we haven’t fixed upon a clear economic model which balances the rights of information producers and information consumers • Not that surprising, since the digital information world is only a few decades old • Economic model underpinning print does a brilliant job of balancing the interests of authors, publishers, libraries, borrowers

E-access: is the digital environment a barrier to access? • E-access an unqualified benefit if • You need to push out information to achieve your purposes – e. g government statistics • You’re making the information available philanthropically – e. g material on an institutional repository • In other cases information supply tends to oscillate between two poles: • Open access: good for user but difficult to make money out of • Access controlled by password or location: good for making money, but bad for openness

E-access: is the digital environment a barrier to access? The issue of e-books sharply exemplifies the problem of finding a balanced economic model: • Early work on e-books and e-chapters in the e. Lib project • Experiment with JISC national licence for electronic textbooks • Tendency, paradoxically, to build the limitations of print distribution in to the e-book model!: • Limiting number of simultaneous accesses • “Print and scan” for inter-library loans • Limiting access to those physically present on campus

E-access: is the digital environment a barrier to access? So, inevitably, at this very early stage, there is a mixed picture, with things often going to extremes: • Producer tyranny: rampant inflation in journal prices; recent statement by STM intended to warn us off return to pre big-deal patterns of inter-library loans • Apparent widespread flouting of copyright law by students – e. g samizdat web sites with illegal copies of textbooks on them

E-access: is the digital environment a barrier to access? Journals (Now) On the plus side: • Academics think they are in information heaven • Publishers have been relatively liberal about terms and conditions relating to • E-journal use by visitors • Use of e-journals to supply ILLs • Even about OA…. . after an embargo period You might almost think that Bernard is still in control…. .

E-access: is the digital environment a barrier to access? Hannibal is happy to let libraries have reasonable terms and conditions around e-journals because he can’t believe his luck: • Academics write the articles for free • Universities contribute £ 145 -£ 195 m of unpaid labour to support peer review and editorial work • Publishers have been allowed to get away with charging above-inflation price rises for many decades But he will definitely turn nasty about these things if we fight back on price

E-access: is the digital environment a barrier to access? To sum up: • E- has led to better access to journals by our users • But we’ve paid a wholly disproportionate price for it • Publishers have been fairly easygoing about access issues • But they won’t be if we fight back on price

E-access: is the digital environment a barrier to access? Journals (Future) Good progress on Open Access • • • Mandates from Research Councils Many universities have OA mandates HEFCE keen on OA for REF 2020 David Willets supports OA Successful, established examples of OA journals with high impact factors • ……. But watch OA doesn’t become All Gold

E-access: is the digital environment a barrier to access? Journals (Future) Price breakthrough with Elsevier? BUT: • Have to keep up momentum with other publishers • Have to keep an eye on terms (particularly postcancellation access) • America has to finish the job

E-access: is the digital environment a barrier to access? Books (now) Pretty good situation: • Continuing print distribution means users of both public and academic libraries can get their hands on just about any book for free • E-book packages have allowed us to augment our collections marvellously But…Hannibal knows that a library is a machine for helping people to avoid buying books. He has a solution to that problem…

Buy a Kindle

E-access: is the digital environment a barrier to access? Books (future) We are in real danger of allowing a digital dystopia to arise, in which the poor (and poorer students in our universities) are excluded from access to information as never before. We have to learn from our experiences with journal publishers and not be naïve a second time.

YES WE CAN!