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Is it ethical to profit from information?
Stephen Rhind-Tutt, President
GW Conference on Ethics & Publishing
June 2015
a) I’ve never taken a course on ethicsb) I’m a for profit publisher c) I’m not a journal publisher
WHO WE ARE
• Publishers of primary sources, streaming video and music
• 100+ people – offices in the US, UK, China, Malaysia and Australia
• Recognized by E-content magazine as one of 100 companies that
“matter most to the digital economy”
Some of our publications
Is it ethical to make a profit on information?
Why ask?
“You are a dirty publisher. Making money from exploiting information is obscene”
Tenured Professor to me, Cambridge, June 2011
“Companies like CAS make $100m in profits…”Participant in DPLA meetings, Harvard, May 2012
“You can’t link to us because that’s making money off what we do. We can’t link to you because you sell your content”
Various comments
Open Access Advocates
Public money pays for research. Publishers sell the research back at outrageous prices to the very people that created it.
All information should be freely accessible
We have the right to profit from information as much and as we like and how we like
Publisher ArgumentIt costs money to make publications. We do it better than anyone else. We charge what the market will bear.
[Presentation Name] | April 15, 2023
Capitalism vs. Communism
[Presentation Name] | April 15, 2023
Protestant vs. Catholic
Road that leads nowhere
[Presentation Name] | April 15, 2023
Let’s focus instead on What’s practical?What can both sides agree on?
And see where it takes us…
6 key points
• One environment for all
• Governments give and governments take away
• ‘Information’ is not a commodity: Open access is not an absolute
• For profit commerce is always present in the information chain
• Customers almost always get what they want in the end
• Businesses follow money
One environment for all…
– SilverPlatter MEDLINE (>$10m in sales)– Royalties to the NLM (<$200k)– Seven other vendors also making $$$
– SilverPlatter ERIC ($1.5m in sales)– Royalties to Dept. of Education (<$100k)– Many other vendors
– SilverPlatter SEC Online– No royalties going back to the SEC
Electronic publishing in1990
– PubMed provides free access to the world– ERIC offered free to the world – SEC filings offered free to the world
– What’s happened to the vendors?
Wind forward to 2011
– Ovid and others continue to profit from public domain MEDLINE
– New entrants – SilverChair, Collexis…– SEC filings continue to sell – Bloomberg,
Yahoo and many new entrants– Aries Systems moved into publisher
services– CSC provides free access to all for ERIC
with a 5 year contract for $29m
Environment in 2011
Someone always tries to make a profit…
Digitization and Conversion
Hosting & Banking
CMS, Indexing and discovery
Infrastructure
Hardware
It’s Darwinian
The role of government
• Differs by country
• Difficult to predict
• Timing
• Hard for most of us to influence
• Cannot rely on it
5 April 1710
Need to add value to survive…
This is a commodity…
This is anything but a commodity
Information isn’t a commodity!
Black & White
Grayscale
24 bit color
48 bit color
100 dpi
600 dpi
JPG
TIFF
Citation
MARC Record
Dirty OCR
99.995% rekeying
Semantic Indexing
Thumbnails
100 dpi
Page
Collection
Letter
Facsimiles
Transcriptions
EAD Finding Aid
Repository
Mobile Web
TCP-IP
Adding more and more value…
Low Value High Value
Document ASCII Searchability
Low res. images
MARC record
High res PDF version
Video abstract
Promotion
Links to citationsAuthor links
Process integration
Cross-searching
Workflow tools
Usage statisticsCollaboration tools
Ability to comment
Underlying data availableDiscovery integration
Open
For fee
http://jeffsuderman.com/what-happens-in-an-internet-minute
If you try and stop profit making…you slow value added
Low Value High Value
Document ASCII Searchability
Low res. images
MARC record
High res PDF version
Video abstract
Promotion
Links to citationsAuthor links
Cross-searching
Workflow tools
Usage statisticsCollaboration tools
Ability to comment
Underlying data availableDiscovery integration
Open
Add more and more value…
Low Value High Value
Document ASCII Searchability
Low res. images
MARC record
High res PDF version
Video abstract
Promotion
Links to citationsAuthor links
Process integration
Cross-searching
Workflow tools
Usage statisticsCollaboration tools
Ability to comment
Underlying data availableDiscovery integration
Open
For fee
Be of the web
Music
NewspapersWebsites
Monographs
Primary Works
Journals
“You may not create links to any …page or file forming part of our website without our prior written permission."
http://www.malcolmcoles.co.uk/blog/links-banned-2011/https://www.flickr.com/photos/proimos/4199675334//
Malcolm Coles’ PostsSites that forbid you from linking to them
More and more ways to add value…
• More editorial value
• More functionality
• More comprehensive
• Semantically organized
• Customization to individuals
• Discipline, community value
• Web/network value
Mobile
Embeds
DiscoveryServices
MARC
SearchEngines
RDF ?
Inbound Links
The American Civil War Research Database
15 times faster to read than to watch…
30 minutes of news12 double spaced pages 5 minutes to read in depth2 minutes to scan read
Adding value to video
Long way to go…
Source: Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom, Gene Bellinger, Durval Castro, Anthony Mills. http://www.systems-thinking.org/
Who, What, When, Where?
Therefore
Why?
Customers get what customers want (in the long run)
Commercial Publisher Behavior
If free access became more profitable than restricted access they’d embrace it very quickly…
Highly predictable!
Sian Harris, Completing the information cycle, Research Information: June/July 2013
Read about Discoveries
Plan Experiments
Conduct Experiments
AnalyzeResults
ShareResults
PublishDiscoveries
Back to 1990…
• The Web fast opening up…
• Who were the candidates to make the big $$$$ in information?– Cambridge Scientific ?– Elsevier ?– Springer ?– America Online?
$ Bn.
Market Capitalization of Selected Companies2000-2015
$ 386Bn.
Summary
• All organizations operate in a Darwinian environment– Funding, Legislation, Investment, Technology, Lobbying,
Philosophy, Commerce, Non-profit• The technology is allowing us to serve customers far
better than ever before
• Free access is here to stay and will exert ever greater pressure on commercial companies to add value
• Commercial companies are here to stay and will have to find new ways to add value or they will cease to exist
[Presentation Name] | April 15, 2023
Thank you!Stephen Rhind-Tutt