Universities try to reduce the cost of knowledge

University is a ridiculously expensive endeavour. Amenity-less rent, bus fares, clubs and societies fees, never-again-nights out, and that gym membership you’ll only use once- the costs add up. Not to mention the boxes and boxes of Lemsip cold and flu, and the infinite Pukka pads full of lecture notes you’ll never look at again because seriously, who can actually read their panicked lecture scrawl? And the £9,000 a year course fee that universities themselves charge? Well, there’s that too.

So, as well as being at least £27,000 in debt, constantly sick and living off of Mum’s lasagne from last weekend, science students are also expected to buy more than a few books to help them with their studies. The extensive reading list is a horror to sift through, I usually just do a lucky dip and hope most of it doesn’t actually come up (it always does). I type titles into Google only to realise that the privilege of actually reading them is going to cost me £150… per book! Where do publishers think we’re getting all this money from? It’s definitely not from SLC.

Where do publishers think we’re getting all this money from? It’s definitely not from SLC…

Of course, our institutions try to help, however five copies of one textbook on a three day loan from the university library doesn’t quite cut it for a module attendance of 180, all with just one week to complete an assignment. The online database of journals and articles is provided with the best of intentions, but when you realise there’s only ¼ page each on Euler’s equations, string theory and stoichiometry, you wonder why they bother paying the ridiculous subscription fees.

Elsevier is a world-renowned science and technology publisher, collaborating with researchers and institutions to provide some of the best materials for education with the  to “expand the boundaries of knowledge for the benefit of humanity”. Sounds great, right? Well, as someone who was one of four people taking A-level physics in my school year (and the only girl), I have first-hand experience of how hard it is to encourage the average kid to take an interest in the ‘dorky’ science subjects. Companies who make such bold and inspiring statements should probably work to make such resources more accessible to the offspring of the working class. Last time I checked, £230 for a book on Skin Pathology is not easily affordable to parents who are working around the clock in order to put food on the table. What about the £674 journal subscription institutions pay for the restricted access with limited resources? No wonder there’s a stigma around intelligence being for the rich!

Companies who make such bold and inspiring statements should probably work to make such resources more accessible to the offspring of the working class…

However, in 2014 some of Germany’s top universities began to fight back. Projekt DEAL was set up by the Alliance of Science Organisations in Germany to negotiate the terms of nationwide subscription agreements with various publishers. Adamant that the price of printed resources was too high considering the large amount of public funding provided for research, type setting and quality control, Projekt DEAL’s aim was to achieve a cheaper, more lucid exchange with such organisations as Elsevier. However, deals turned sour in December 2016 when 60 of Germany’s top universities cancelled their Elsevier subscriptions when the company failed to propose a desirable settlement. Since then, Elsevier have failed to provide a satisfactory licensing agreement despite multiple cracks at it. This resulted in a further four German institutions announcing their decisions to cancel their subscriptions at the end of 2017. The boycott is now in full swing and hopefully will pressurise Elsevier, along with many other overpriced publishing giants, to succumb to reasonable demands of respectable academics.

The best part of writing this piece was coming across an engaging write up of the most recent outcomes, and the rejection of Elsevier’s latest pitch. I was just getting to the juicy bit of the exposé when a pop up stated, “PREMIUM CONTENT: You have reached your free article limit for this week”. Hypocrisy at its finest.