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Academics tend to look down at issues of
copyright and ignore their implications.

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As a consequence, as a community, they
make mistakes that can prove very costly.

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The most obvious example of these mistakes
is with scientific publishing of papers.

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Let's look at the submission process 
for a paper in a mathematics journal.

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After I write that paper, my submission
will follow the peer review process.

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A couple of other mathematicians 
will look at it to give a referee report,

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and a journal editor will decide to accept it
or not, based on those reports.

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Neither the referees or the journal editor
will be paid very much for this.

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If my paper gets accepted, most of the
time,

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I have to cede copyright to the journal, 
I have to sign a contract.

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Then the paper gets published, 
university libraries around the world,

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including my own,

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that of the referees or the editor will
buy a copy of the journal.

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I can't get it directly to them, 
or all the other universities

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because I don't own 
the copyright anymore.

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Because of this dominating position 
of publishers

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-- the owners of journals -- 
most subscriptions are very expensive

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and charge a price that does not reflect 
the value added by the publisher.

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In fact, there is little work done 
by the publisher in mathematics.

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The state of the paper at the moment of
submission is very close, visually,

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to the state at the moment of publication,

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because we are already using similar tools
to edit formulas, as book copy editors.

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So in the end, the mathematics community
pays publishers a lot of money

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for buying back their own work.

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It's a crazy system, 
but one that has evolved

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because academics 
did not pay attention

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and let their most prestigious brands, 
the historically most prestigious journals

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be bought by big 
publishing companies.

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[CC BY-SA
Paul Olivier Dehaye]