The debate over how publishers use the large “non-publication costs” (Fig. 1) that they incur and academic libraries, mainly, are funding has been going on for some time now. Above and beyond the cost items we discuss in our paper on publication costs, it has been established that investments in surveillance technology are also part of the publisher spending academic libraries are financing.

Until the late 1980s or early 1990s, academic institutions such as universities and research institutes were at the forefront of developing and implementing digital technology. After email they developed Gopher, TCP/IP, http, the NCSA Mosaic browser and experimented with Mbone. Since then, at most academic institutions, infrastructure has moved past the support of email and browsers only at a glacial pace.

“an academic career, in which a person is forced to produce scientific writings in great amounts, creates a danger of intellectual superficiality” Albert Einstein Isaacson W (2008) Einstein (His Life and Universe) (Simon and Schuster, New York), 1st Ed, p 79

Scholarly journals, on the face of it, emerged in the 17 ^th century as a medium to facilitate communication of scientific discoveries among interested scholars. In the 21 ^st century, it’s not all that different: researchers form communities around topics in which they share a common interest: Journal of Neuroscience, Pediatrics and Neonatology, Journal of Economics or the British Educational Research Journal.

Around 2005, German politicians decided on a plan to circumvent a newly created amendment to the German constitution that prevents federal funds from supporting state-owned institutions such as universities.