Thread by @AdamJMosley

It'd be nice to have access to all the books and all the journal articles without having to think about it. But no-one can read everything... 1/

Publishers: if you price your products too high, expect academics and academic libraries not to assign them. We'll find something else for our students to work with. 2/

For 'must have' literature for student research and our own, there's always interlibrary loans. Not to mention other workarounds. 3/

I'm not especially interested in textbooks with lots of added extras on a subscription website. Basic accessibility of e-books, yes. Page numbers for referencing, yes. E-book platforms that actually get the book's publication details right would be nice. 4/

But if there was a one-stop website that contained everything needed to run a particular course, it wouldn't be any use to me and I wouldn't make it 'the course textbook'. Because it wouldn't help my students acquire the research skills they need. 5/

They need practice in assembling knowledge from multiple texts and multiple kinds of resource. 6/

Bundling — well, bundling means I sometimes get online access to materials that I'm pretty sure no else in my workplace actually needs. So I'm probably a beneficiary of bundling. 7/

But it's not so great for my students, who sometimes overlook the accessibly-written textbook in the library in favour of the overspecialised research e-book no-one actually ordered. 8/

It would be better, I think, if academics and academic librarians got to pick the individual books they actually wanted. 8/

But thank you publishers for your exorbitant prices and exploitative practices. You're making academics think harder about things they've often taken for granted. 10/

Which journals should we submit to, and referee for, and edit? Not the overpriced ones, or the ones associated with other unsavoury business practices. 11/

Which publishers should we work with: authoring for, editing for, reviewing manuscripts for, reviewing the final products of? Ditto. 12/

I mean, I'm a huge fan of well-produced physical books. But I like affordable books even more. Open access publishing is fraught with problems for the arts and humanities. 13/

But thank you, publishers, for making us think harder and harder about the merits of OA and how we can make it work, with you or without you. 14/

Academic authors: I'm sorry if I'm not able to assign your book to students, comment on your manuscript, or referee your article because of who your publisher is. 15/

I know that finding a route to publication is not always straightforward. And pricing will reflect the nature of the work and the likely demand. Research monographs don't need to be priced as low as student textbooks should be. 16/

But it's time for us to pay more attention to what constitutes #EthicalAuthorship 17/

This thread inspired by #ebooksos. Have you signed yet? academicebookinvestigation.org 18/18