When I tell my collegues in Italy and worldwide that as of 1/1/25 Univ. of Pisa won't have subscription to *any* scientific journal, nobody believes me. 😥📝🧪
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The system has successfully resisted any demand for change in decades. The problems have been discussed since the 1980s. Only the downfall of libraries might cause politicians to think.
The Minister of University has publicly made fun of our Rector who was asking for more funds. I'm not posting the video because it's in Italian... They are deaf to any signal
My knowledge is limited (all right, I don’t know what I’m talking about) but the cost to a university of setting up a website to publish the research it produces should be very low.
It seems to me that this is the way it should be done: keep it all under one roof.
These are not solutions. Sci-hub is illegal and stopped updating in 2021. Asking any MS to authors needs a lot of time. Btw, it would not stop the industry...
totally agree. still, we (the academics) created the publish-or-perish system, and now access to papers published by profit publishing houses is like oxygen. is there a way to do without it, and still stay in the system?
Unfortunately i do believe you, i wish i could not. My University has very very few subscriptions too so i am constantly begging authors for pdf copies, or friends working at other unis to download things for me, it sucks so bad . Sci hub i miss you so.
It's not like we are entirely powerless against this. If possible I choose open access publications. So sad work arounds like SciHub, etc. are even more frequently used to access our OWN work. Ridiculous!
Also firing many academics, or is library divestment UP's cost-cutting strategy *instead* of firing staff? Will you have a university full of academics who cannot access research?
Academics with a permanent position cannot be fired in Italy. As you say, in the mid term we will have many welll-paid professors just for teaching. In the short term, we will not hire any young professor for years (2 or more). This is a disgrace worse than the subscription cuts
Yes, a disgrace. In Australia, too, academics cannot simply be fired, but entire Departments can be shut down, in which case the academics lose their jobs.
I have no Idea what would happen in a similar situation in Italy. Most likely we would be moved to other universities or other public offices, without losing the job
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UK: Will austerity drive Open Access?
It seems to me that this is the way it should be done: keep it all under one roof.
“Monetise it all” is the ethos of the publishing houses.