Best Selling Organic Chemistry Textbook Goes Open Access After Professor Regains The Copyright
from the giving-back dept
It’s well known that textbook prices are generally high. That’s in part because academic publishers effectively have a monopoly when it comes to standard texts. Very often, these are texts that students simply must have as part of their course, which means they will pay even exorbitant prices.
One such book was John McMurry’s Organic Chemistry. It’s regarded as something of a classic in its field, and had a correspondingly high price tag: around £70 in the UK, and $80 in the US. But that’s about to change thanks to the generosity of McMurry. As a report in Chemistry World explains, he spotted that after 30 years he could ask for the book’s copyright to be returned to him from the publisher. It’s ridiculous that academics were expected to assign copyright in this way, but at least there was a time limit in this case. McMurry has chosen to bring out the next edition of his book with OpenStax:
OpenStax was founded in 1999 by Richard Baraniuk, an electrical engineering professor at Rice University. Originally named Connexions, OpenStax started as an Open Educational Resource (OER) repository where faculty around the world could publish, share, and remix educational materials. We started publishing our own line of free, peer-reviewed textbooks in 2012 to maximize our impact by providing high quality, flexible, turnkey resources for instructors and students at little to no cost.
It’s great news that OpenStax will be publishing future editions, and McMurry deserves huge kudos for making the move. Also interesting is the business model that will be used for the new edition:
OpenStax is part of Rice University. We are also supported by foundations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation and other generous supporters. Foundations give us the funding to create high quality, peer-reviewed textbooks that are written by paid educators and experts, not crowd sourced. We also have partnerships with for-profit companies that provide sophisticated, optional online homework at a low cost. These partners give us a mission support fee in return for using our content, contributing to our sustainability.
This is yet another example of the true fans/patronage model that Walled Culture has written about and espoused for some time. But there’s also space for the book’s former commercial publisher, Cengage, as the Chemistry World news story reports:
Cengage will still make money from McMurry’s book through the supporting online material. ‘We like to have them continue selling that because a lot of students want that,’ McMurry says. He explains publishers still do add value. ‘I would not want to see them disappear, but they’re not going to make anywhere near as much money in the future.’
That’s exactly right. Alongside main texts, which should be freely available as McMurry’s book will be, there is plenty of opportunity for publishers to find ways of selling ancillary materials and services. The idea that moving to free open access texts will ruin publishers is too simplistic. The only publishers that will be hurt by such a move are the ones too lazy to think of new ways of making money in the changed environment.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter, Diaspora, or Mastodon. Originally published to Walled Culture.
Filed Under: copyright, john mcmurry, open access, organic chemistry, textbooks
Companies: cengage, openstax
Comments on “Best Selling Organic Chemistry Textbook Goes Open Access After Professor Regains The Copyright”
John McMurry’s Organic Chemistry is available here in Australia:
Aus$ –
Book Depository (Amazon owned) discounted to $153.60 down from it’s usual price of $214.95.
Booktopia (not Amazon owned, yet) $152.75 discounted price.
Other assorted bookshops the prices range from $155 – $215.
So having the book go open access will be most useful to people who need the tome. Australians get ripped off with just about everything comes in from overseas, that’s the problem with being a captive market.
And now, universities will stop using it.
Re:
My university used the Fessenden Organic Chemistry textbook for its courses when I was there a decade ago. Still got the hardback on my shelf.
Re:
Why? I’ve heard rumors relating to university bookstore profits, but as far as I know, book selection is determined by professors or departments who get no cut of the profits. In fact, the few times one of my professors assigned their own book, they told us where we could get a free copy. And most will email a paper to anyone who requests it (it’s why they like Sci-hub—saves them the burden of sending requests and responding to them). University administrators tend not to love the publishers either, because they’re paying to publish their own professors’ papers and paying again so the students can get access.
I don’t see any reason why anyone involved would be against an open-access textbook, were a good one available.
Re: Re:
Yep, ask anyone in the academic community what the most helpful innovation of the last decade has been, and sci-hub tops that list every time.
Re:
university?
I used it for my last two years at school, for my chemistry A-level (and S-level) in the late 90s.
I imagine 30 years is the amount of time after which he can notify the publisher he’s terminating the contract, and they can’t really do anything about it. But he could’ve asked at any time. If that seems like a futile request, it tells you something about the true relationship between author and publisher.
The great thing about it being organic is, you’re less likely to get cancer from eating it.
Re:
I don’t know how much use a chemistry textbook with no artificial chemicals in it would be, to be perfectly honest XD
He did this in loving memory of his late son, Peter McMurry as an acknowledgement of the generosity and kindness Peter would show to his friends before he died. People on Techdirt might see it as a well-deserved raised middle finger to copyright, but this decision was absolutely more personal and heartbreaking than any of us would give credit for.
The Copyright Cult wants us to think that Copyright is necessary for culture to thrive. This kind of thinking is backward and unimaginative. There are business models that don’t involve charging grossly high monoploy rents that can thrive in production of culture. Like with this open access business model.
I have seen textbooks that cost like $200 brand new. Ridiculous. Full-time students are usually people with low income. The Copyright system lock up culture with paywalls for lifetime which disadvantage the poor. When it comes to access to knowledge, this is just so wrong.
Culture should be readily accessible for everyone, not just for the privileged. The poor are stakeholders as well because their liberties are taken away too to make Copyright works. The system is inherently unfair to them. Copyright promotes inequality and social injustice. Just for this reason, Copyright should be abolished. It should be abolished to make room for a more superior goverment policy that is conducive to things like online digital libraries. A policy that just don’t just merely promote innovation and arts but facilitate access to them as well. (That if we choose to assume that Copyright actually promotes innovation and arts which seem to ignore the fact that Copyright actively often hinder certain innovation and arts…)
Free up culture and make it more accessible to the unpriveleged. Thanks for sharing a story about an enlightened soul who cared more about the access to knowledge more than the money.
Re:
For an academic, writing a book cab be good for their career, but usually does little for their wallet. Its like academic publisher have kept their position because being published in known journals is a requirement for a successful career, the money only flows one way, from academia to the publishers.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Re:
Minimalists like you are why Prenda Law and Malibu Media were started. You must be purged for the safety of everyone.
Re: Re:
lolwut
Re: Re:
Said the basic copyright bitch.
Re: Re:
Oh look, it’s the Bayside Advisory fanboy again. Don’t you have a dead grandmother to sue?
Re: Re:
… projected nobody who has ever once demonstrated evidence of being mentally competent, ever.
Jesus Christ alone got me through organic chem.
Got a A the 1st semester and a C the 2nd semester (and those grades were with a professor that gave us a few points on the exam if we went to his office for tutoring).
Was not a fan of organic!
Re:
” …with a professor that gave us a few points on the exam if we went to his office for tutoring”
Well, I guess you weren’t very good at “tutoring” your professor…
I’m not a minimalist, Mr. hatemonger. I’m an abolitionist. Please recognize the difference. Minimalists are Copyright Cultists. They drank the kool-aid as well and they think Copyright is so amazing, its just that it should come in small doses. They defend Copyright existence. I don’t. I go with empirical data not coppyright cult dogma. If Copyright is not adequately justified for what it incurs: the social injustice, loss in liberties, economic costs from inefficiency and loss of opportunity like wasting of wealth though monoploy rents that could have gone to more socially beneficial enterprises etc etc then it needs to go away, that is my position. I believe government policies should be empirically driven and Copyright should not be an exception.
As to Prenda Law and Melibu Media, who cares about them, there will be always pricks who fuck others. They are small-time. We should worry more about the corrupt pricks up high in the government who pull shit like modern Copyright in name of good for us the 99%. We who worry should speak truth to power.
Re:
Okay, Mr Abolitionist…
Do you agree that content creators should retain control of the content they created, whether it be original works, remixed from original works or using work-for-hire content?
Do you also agree that people, ie, the proleteriat, should be able to make a living wage from creative pursuits and its related pursuits?
Do you also agree that corporations/guilds should not have this oversized power over individuals when it comes to the “curation” of culture?
These are the basic ideas that are in the Statute of Anne, even if the history and actual purpose did not align to them.