In February of this year Michael Chibnik published an [editorial piece in _American Anthropologist_](http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/aman.12231) arguing that while he supported the idea of open access to the publication he also now thinks "that gold open access publication is unlikely to be feasible in the near future for AA". This is a regrettable situation since, from the editorial, it does not appear that many options have been considered to

Last weekend I wanted a break from my usual activities, so I decided to write myself some tools to automate a few tasks. One of these is to pull down QIF data from my bank so that I can import it into money management software (I know, I know: I go wild at weekends). I did [a little bit](https://github.com/MartinPaulEve/lloyds_tsb_scrape) on this a while back but I needed to refresh my memory.

I wrote yesterday, in a grumpy state, about the [restrictiveness of copyright and licensing of screenshots in academic material](https://www.martineve.com/2015/05/12/another-copyright-absurdity-using-film-screenshots/). Today brings happier news.

Just a little anger/despair at the state of our cultural industries. The 1993 film, _Demolition Man_ is 1hr 55mins in length. That means that, at 24fps, there are 165,600 frames in the film. No single one of those frames is a substitute for the film or would damage its commercial viability for Warner Bros through dissemination.

The new Conservative government in the United Kingdom has promised to scrap the Human Rights Act. The [rationale that they give for this](https://www.conservatives.com/~/media/files/downloadable%20Files/human_rights.pdf) centres around originalism (claiming that the HRA has been interpreted beyond its original scope) and national self-determination (the EU telling the UK government what laws it can pass). I remain worried about this.

Academic publishers come in all shapes and sizes. Some are commercial, some are mission-driven, some are not-for-profit. This creates an interesting dynamic for a market. Not-for-profit publishers see themselves as partners of the academy, working alongside their academic colleagues to disseminate material. Indeed, some university presses are departments of universities.

I am very pleased to announce that, as of today (1 ^st of May, 2015), I am now a Senior Lecturer in Literature, Technology and Publishing at Birkbeck, University of London. I have greatly enjoyed my time at Lincoln and fully intend to stay in touch with the colleagues and friends that I have made there, whom I will sorely miss. That said, I am, of course, looking forward to the future.

A while ago, I wrote of the tricky situation potentially faced by UK OA publishers operating on a cost-pool basis/consortial basis. After our accountants gave a report on this about a month or so ago, I sought confirmation from HMRC that it was, indeed, the case that these models do not count as a direct supply of a service.

I tell people, repeatedly, that publisher brand fuels a strange economic environment for scholarly communications. I also note that symbolic capital (reputation) has a direct conversion to material capital (money). Finally, I point out that the economics of books are harder than journals for new OA publishers for reasons of scale in both material and symbolic economics.

There is no single cause of the problems with the economics of scholarly communications. The expectation that we can publish more and more research on the same, or lesser, budgets is one factor. The rise of profiteering commercial publishers is another. There is also a group of smaller other aspects, though, one of which I will discuss here.

"It is never a good time to start a new journal. Even so, 1987 seems unpropitious to a remarkable degree. The academic world in general feels itself to be under attack. The Humanities in particular feel marginalized and underfunded. Outwardly querulous, inwardly riven, they sense themselves to be hopelessly at odds with a culture which has long abandoned any recognition of the value of their role.