I understand the fears [of book publishers], but I think most of them are unfounded. And I think they could lead publishers to miss some crucial opportunities....[T]he control of intellectual property by publishers is not threatened by Google Print or Library. My own National Academies Press started participating in Google Print early in the program. Google has already scanned more than 1,300 of our titles, with another 1,000 pending, and we are sending it more all the time. It isn't displaying advertisements beside images of our works because we asked it not to. It will take down any book we ask it to, and our contract leads us to believe it will always do so. It would be madness not to -- and thus launch a full-scale copyright war. Further, based on our own experience over the last seven years, I can predict with confidence that online-search capabilities will boost book sales: A university press that joins Google will find itself using "print-on-demand" technology to fill orders from its backlist for that 1958 tome on the Maginot Line that it never dreamed would have a life in the 21st century....At our press, we already make more than 3,400 books available free online, and we began using the "page-image" approach Google is taking in 1998: presenting a picture of the page, with searchable text behind it. Every new book we published was scanned and made navigable online, free, at the same time it was available for sale. To our delight, we found that page images with searchable text behind them actually seemed to increase sales, not replace them with online reading....For the last few years, I've heard (mostly older) scholars and librarians moan, "If they can't Google it, it doesn't exist for these kids." That's a reality publishers should be loath to deny. In the next three to five years, as the most-productive young faculty members publish their works, I think we'll see what I call a "Google access citation effect. "Citation indices let us know how well referenced any document is -- what books or articles or essays are most influential -- by measuring their references in new scholarship. If the new digitally driven scholars can Google an essay or book, then they'll use it for further research. If they can't, they may well not....I can speak only for myself, not my press, but in general I think that it's in the best self-interest of scholarly publishers to relax a bit about how we respond to intellectual-property issues raised by digitization plans like Google's. We need a bit more trust, so that we can take advantage of the new capabilities of a networked society....Google is offering something marvelous, if imperfect; its model is more likely to help more people find library resources and publishers' works than anything else on the horizon.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/05/2005 09:19:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
