Applications to attend OpenCon 2015 on November 14-16 in Brussels, Belgium are now open! The application is available on the OpenCon website at opencon2015.org/attend and includes the opportunity to apply for a travel scholarship to cover the cost of travel and accommodations. Applications will close on June 22nd at 11:59pm PDT.

The abstract for my talk at Congress 2015, in Ottawa: The economics of scholarly communications are complex. In fact, it could be said that there are two parallel economies that mirror each other: a symbolic economy of reputation or “prestige”, which is obvious and important to scholars, and a material economy that is most clear to the academic library.

It was with great pleasure that we announced, on Friday, that the OLH now has its first journal joining that has [moved away from a subscription model to a pure gold OA basis](https://www.openlibhums.org/2015/05/29/announcing-the-first-subscription-journal-to-flip-to-open-access-through-the-open-library-of-humanities/). This makes me very happy.

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.