re The Cost of Knowledge

[Guest guest]

,

this looks like a worthy cause - until you take a deeper look at the

mechanics of creating databases of scientific (especially medical)

publications.

Before you can get access to a medical paper (free access, paid access -

does not matter), you need a way of finding it. With websites, Google does

it. With scientific publications, it does not work that way (no idea why:

from the technical point of view, it should...).

Instead, someone needs to actually read (or at least briefly scan and skim)

the published paper and do the work called " indexing " - in other words,

decide which keywords to assign to this paper so that a database search

including one or more of these keywords would yield a selection that

includes this specific paper. There are helper software programs making

this work a bit less tedious - but the final decision is still made by a

human indexer.

In 2009-2011, I worked as training development manager for a KPO (Knowledge

Process Outsourcing) company, and Elsevier was on the list of major

customers. The fact that I belonged to the middle management allowed me to

attend meetings where some figures were presented.

Brace yourself for a shock. It costs customers around a thousand dollars to

get a paper indexed. And every month, about fifty thousand new medical

papers are published. Do your math - and you come up with some real money:

50 000 papers/month x $1K/paper x 12 months makes roughly US$600,000,000.

Over half a billion little green pieces of paper.

Someone has to foot this bill, eh?

Not to mention the fact that this business gives work to thousands of

people doing the indexing (mostly in the " developing world " countries). You

don't want them to starve.

Now that you know the whole picture, make up your minds. You can of course

sign innumerous petitions - but unless you invent a better way of doing it

ALL so as not to rock the Titanic-sized boat you better find a worthier

target.

That said, I would love to have free access to information. And to beer as

well. [sigh]

(Any petitions there to make beer a free commodity? I will sign it without

hesitation!)

Wishing a good weekend to y'all -

Lev

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Lev ABRAMOV

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http://il.linkedin.com/in/levabramov