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“What has he been smoking,” you probably ask yourself not-infrequently while reading these sanitarium-wall scribblings. Actually, I don’t smoke; never have. Anything, ever. I inhaled plenty of secondhand tobacco smoke during the first twenty years of my life, but then, since the turn of the century you almost have to go looking for secondhand smoke. Honestly…

I’m just this way.

You’ll have to settle for answers to “what has he been reading” these past couple months, then. It’s a fairly short list, honestly; between being busy with stuff and getting on a bit of a streak of mediocre books for a while, progress slowed down a ways, at least compared with the reading rampage which was August.

The Book of the Spider, Paul Hillyard. Mixed bag. There wasn’t much of a narrative, here; it was really more a collection of very diverse bits of information about spiders. Some really cool. Some, like the sections on the history of the study of arachnids, not so much. The two most memorable tidbits: 1) little teeny spiders can spin out web lines long enough for the wind to catch and lift them up for remarkable parasailing voyages, and 2) there are “social spider” species in which the normally solitary predators rub their many shoulders peacefully. Which should freak me out because one of the things I like about spiders is that unlike insects, one spider is generally not a sign of an infestation, but still, pretty neat.

Nemesis, Lindsey Davis. I think this is the first BCBR review of Davis’ “Falco series” of mystery novels about a Roman-empire-era P.I. I really like them; in a crowded field they’re fun, funny and always page-turners. This one was no exception, and also included one remarkably somber and rather touching scene which I won’t soon forget. I’m not sure Davis has any idea where she’s taking the series, and in this one she had an almost-ridiculous number of plates spinning at one point, but so far so good.

A History of the English Speaking Peoples, Winston Churchill. Excuse me while I fetch some strong tea. There we go. Better, and appropriate. (more…)

the astronomical prices being charged for academic journals isn’t exactly news, but university libraries refusing to pay them is.

university of california libraries said “fuck that” when the Nature Publishing Group decided to quadruple their license fees in the middle of a budget crisis: the UC says it’ll drop all 67 of its subscriptions if the publisher doesn’t back off.

that’s a serious punch to the grapes for Nature — $23.4 million in online journals alone. the UC system is huge, and it’s about time they flex some of that economic muscle. but that’s only part of the leverage big universities have over academic publishers.

Using NPG’s own figures, an analysis by CDL suggests that UC articles published in Nature alone have contributed at least $19 million dollars in revenue to NPG over the past 6 years—or more than $3 million dollars per year for just that one journal. Moreover, UC Faculty supply countless hours serving as reviewers, editors, and advisory board members.

…[U]nless NPG is willing to maintain our current licensing agreement, UC Faculty would ask the UC Libraries to suspend their online subscriptions entirely, and all UC Faculty would be strongly encouraged to:

• Decline to peer review manuscripts for journals from the Nature Publishing Group.
• Resign from Nature Publishing Group editorial and advisory boards.
• Cease to submit papers to the Nature Publishing Group.
• Refrain from advertising any open or new UC positions in Nature Publishing Group journals.
• Talk widely about Nature Publishing Group pricing tactics and business strategies with colleagues outside UC, and encourage sympathy actions such as those listed above.

uh oh! looks like somebody figured out that publishers benefit a lot more from the work of academics than the other way around. this could make things very, very unpleasant for Nature.

the last bullet point is especially exciting. i want to see this become a nationwide movement — in my fantasy, it leads to the foundation of some kind of academic commons. faculty already know that commercial publishing is a terrible model for disseminating their work and staying current in the field, and one that’s obviated by the web. they’re not making money publishing their work in journals (most of them, anyway), though they’re obligated to publish for purposes of tenure and career advancement. administrators, meanwhile, have been jolted out of their complacency by the deluge of red ink and are suddenly open to ideas they wouldn’t have entertained not so long ago. the time is right for bold action against IP monopolies, and public institutions of higher education have the resources to make some big changes to the way we circulate and share knowledge.

go librarians!