Excellent article on the success of the subscription model, and the ways it is being refined for online content.

The Future of Open Access and the move toward Open Data. Conference in London or nearby, Q1 2015.

“This conference is timed to follow the publication of RCUK’s review of the impact of Open Access so far — expected late 2014”

“Delegates will discuss ways universities, academics and publishers can maximise the potential of Open Access and raise awareness of its uses among the public and businesses”

Hopefully that aim won’t be swamped by the inevitable rehash of the funding debate…

“Further planned sessions address some of the remaining implementation issues for Open Access, including concerns relating embargo periods, the cost of implementation for universities and the impact on early career researchers.”

Ideally the ‘funding / implementation’ strands might even be on a different day than the ‘maximise the potential / raise awareness’ strands?

PhilPapers is the free index and search tool that comprehensively tracks philosophy papers online (paywall, open, and ‘citations only’). They’re now calling for supporting subscriptions from academic institions, and will restrict feature access for those who don’t subscribe…

“To sustain PhilPapers in the long run, we need financial support for new technical and administrative staff. … the best way forward is a model involving annual subscriptions for large institutions. Starting on 1st July 2014, the PhilPapers Foundation requires that research and teaching institutions offering a B.A. or higher degree in philosophy subscribe to PhilPapers in order to have the right of access to its index. … Access … remains free for individuals accessing PhilPapers from home. Institutions that do not subscribe will have their access limited in various ways.”

Great idea. It’ll be really interesting to see what they restrict, how they do it, and if it actually works.

The South African government is reportedly about to enforce a blanket sales tax on all national/international e-commerce from 1st April 2014. South African ejournal subscribers report that, in combination with a weak currency, this will amount to an immediate cut of “about 40% of their purchasing power” when buying international ejournal subscriptions. It seems that anyone selling ejournals/ebooks, online music and other virtual goods (or even online services) into South Africa after 1st April is required to register for sales tax with the South African government, or face two years in prison.

Sales tax changes are also afoot in the UK and EU, and will affect academic e-content buyers. Most ebooks (and iTunes music, Xbox games, and VOD video) have previously been sold into the UK from the tiny nation of Luxembourg where VAT was set at a low rate. The EU has scrapped that work-around, and is shifting control of taxing e-commerce back to the purchaser’s nation. For UK scholars this seems to mean that by 2015 we’ll see a 15%+ rise in the purchase price of individual ebooks from the likes of Amazon.

As for academic ejournals their sales tax in the UK is already set at a whopping 20%. And as far as I know no paywall publishers rushed over to Luxembourg, just in order to save our libraries a few pounds. UK government states that this 20% tax is not changing any time soon (unless we leave the EU)…

There is no scope with the existing EU VAT [sales tax] legislation to introduce a zero or reduced rate for ebooks or ejournals. (Hansard, the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, on 4th April 2013).

It seems that there’s little left to tax these days, and a South African style blanket sales tax on all ecommerce sales and services is going to be tempting many grasping governments around 2016.

The Amazon Public Data Sets service offers free data storage for useful public domain Big Data sets, on Amazon’s uber-servers. Analysis tools too, it seems.

Open Access Futures in the Humanities and Social Sciences, a one-day conference at the LSE in London, 24th October 2013. Sounds like it could get very tediously hung up on “What type of Open?” rather than exploring a broader vision of open futures, but it might be worth attending. Free, and currently with 36 tickets remaining. Sadly I can’t afford to get to London these days.