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The blog of neurobiologist Björn Brembs
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Published
Author Björn Brembs

The debate over how publishers use the large “non-publication costs” (Fig. 1) that they incur and academic libraries, mainly, are funding has been going on for some time now. Above and beyond the cost items we discuss in our paper on publication costs, it has been established that investments in surveillance technology are also part of the publisher spending academic libraries are financing.

Published
Author Björn Brembs

Until the late 1980s or early 1990s, academic institutions such as universities and research institutes were at the forefront of developing and implementing digital technology. After email they developed Gopher, TCP/IP, http, the NCSA Mosaic browser and experimented with Mbone. Since then, at most academic institutions, infrastructure has moved past the support of email and browsers only at a glacial pace.

Published
Author Björn Brembs

Scholarly journals, on the face of it, emerged in the 17 th century as a medium to facilitate communication of scientific discoveries among interested scholars. In the 21 st century, it’s not all that different: researchers form communities around topics in which they share a common interest: Journal of Neuroscience, Pediatrics and Neonatology, Journal of Economics or the British Educational Research Journal.