 |
 |
Actually, in no place is interlibrary loan (ILL) a free service. Just because the cost is invisible to the researcher, at least at institutions who bear the brunt of the cost, that doesn't mean it's free, just as subscribing to all those journals (also "free" to the researcher), as the library also does, is not free. (Last year my institution, one of the largest and richest in the world, spent more than $500,000 on ILL requests -- you read that right, more than half-a-million dollars -- with most of those being article requests to journals to which even my very rich institution does not subscribe.) It not only costs an enormous amount of money for institutions to borrow copies of books and articles -- pretty close to $30 *per request* at my institution, as Myriam says about hers -- but libraries are not allowed to make electronic copies to hold for the next time such a request is made, but rather need to fulfill the request anew every time it is made. There are also increasingly tight restrictions on international ILL, making it sometimes impossible for a request to be fulfilled. As for any employment opportunities arising for people to work in ILL fulfillment, most ILL departments employ cheap student labor to do the processing -- otherwise it would be even more expensive than it is! -- including the paperwork, scanning, boxing, delivering, and so on, so it's not really an employment-generating service, if by that some people meant employment in some sort of professional and ongoing fashion. The other suggestions are equally naive in some respects. Like ILL, the PDFs that appear on Google Scholar are often not free in the sense of freely available. If you get access to the final PDF through that mechanism, it's normally because you're accessing Google Scholar through your university's library's proxy and your university subscribes. There can be free versions available, if the publisher allows access after a certain amount of time or if the paper's been deposited in an institutional repository that is optimized for Google Scholar so that it comes up in a search, but you're more likely to find the PDF on the open Web. That said, in that case, it's usually because it's been put up (quite often in violation of the publisher's copyright transfer agreement) on the author's Web site. (That presupposes the author has taken the trouble to post the article, of course.) Thankfully, most publishers now do allow some sort of version to be posted online, either on the departmental Web site or in the institutional repository, but it's rarely allowed to be that final published version. If you want the final version, you can, of course, write to the author -- who, by the way, is also often not allowed to send it to you, in accordance with the terms the author may have signed, but since authors rarely read what they sign, they don't know about that (or that they're not allowed to post that final PDF on their Web site). Such a request can take some time, of course, and assumes you can find the person and that he/she has an electronic copy to send and does so quickly. Don't get me wrong. I'm all for people doing due diligence in their research in the first instance and trying to find a copy (final or not) online first, but let's not pretend that access is easy (or inexpensive) for lots of people -- and let's also not pretend that at least part of what's going on here in this complaint about article requests is that, at the end of the day, academics quite often don't care about other academics. If you did, you'd not sign away your copyright and so could do with your own work whatever you then wished, including posting that final PDF in numerous places where it could be easily found and downloaded by your colleagues. You'd perhaps even create a CGF Repository where people could go to find final version PDFs by authors who had kept their copyright (or gotten permission from their publisher to post that final PDF) and then have taken the trouble to upload it there. And so on. Instead, for the most part, you won't want to be bothered; you continue to sign away your copyright and then complain when people who can't get access request help getting their hands on the piece. You have the power when you publish your work to give access to your colleagues, if you'll just take some time to research journals that have liberal publishing policies and only publish there or add an addendum (if necessary) to that copyright transfer form allowing you to post the final PDF -- and then do so. As for publishers knowing what's going on here and taking some action against this list for all these requests, I'm sure you all know that there are publishers lurking on this list now -- some who have been on this list for years -- but I would hope all these requests are helping to inform their increasingly liberal approach toward people sharing articles more broadly. That they would be more likely to go after authors or institutions for posting final version PDFs on Web sites than for someone sending one article to one person ad hoc is, I'd say, safe to say. Posting the final version on your Web site or in your institutional repository is quite often explicitly forbidden. Sending one article upon request is quite often considered to be fair use. It might be interesting to hear from publishers, if they wanted to out themselves on this list, as to how they feel about all of this, although I'd be surprised if any of them weighed in -- but in any case, I doubt they'll be taking a heavy-handed approach toward their own authors, on this list or anywhere else, if they know which side their bread is buttered on, anyway. Best regards, Rebecca On Mon, May 28, 2012 at 10:46 AM, Myriam Houssay-Holzschuch < [log in to unmask]> wrote: > Hi all, > I'll second Eric's remark: in France, in our state-funded universities, > ILL is not free. It is either paid by the scholar's research team (a team > with often limited resources: I was once called in by my head to stop my > 'unreasonable ILL expenses'. They amounted to 36 euros for one year - and > the team's resources did not allow for the same access for all other > researchers) or by the researcher herself, out of her personal money. > I have been lucky enough not to have to ask the list about any article, > relying on other informal means and personal contacts (thanks guys!), but > access is a huge problem. Just to give you an idea of the magnitude of the > problem: I have currently no institutional access to either Antipode or > Progress in Human Geography… I have to go through ILL, and pay, or rely on > friends. > So, > - well-funded libraries and free ILL do have to be supported, by all > means, as they are a very rare service even in rich countries > - and I share the frustration of people having to go through the list to > access knowledge > > Best, > Myriam > > > Myriam HOUSSAY-HOLZSCHUCH > [log in to unmask] > http://www.ens-lyon.eu/73516614/0/fiche___pagelibre/ > > Professor > Junior Fellow, Institut Universitaire de France > Co-Editor, ACME: www.acme-journal.org > Associate Book Review Editor, H-SAfrica > > University Joseph Fourier / University of Grenoble > Institut de Géographie Alpine - Cité des Territoires > 14 bis avenue Marie Reynoard > 38100 Grenoble - France > UMR 5194 PACTE > tel.: +33 (0) 4 76 82 20 00/20 29 > fax: +33 (0) 4 76 82 20 01 > cell: +33 (0) 6 42 59 82 27 >