The ‘lost sales’ argument has been thoroughly discredited, both academically and legally, for both music and film piracy. How are academic publishers still getting away with using it to justify ebook pricing? https://twitter.com/yiwen_h/status/1313031922927448064

If a student can access an ebook via the library, it does NOT mean that student would otherwise have gone out and bought the book in print themselves. Totally fallacious argument. And it's time we stopped publishers using it.

How many books does an average student use over a three-year undergraduate degree? Hundreds? Thousands? You really think, if the library wasn't providing them, a student would buy all of those?

We recognise that the public good overrides company profit when it comes to the existence of libraries. That's why libraries are allowed to loan books for free! It's why libraries exist! Because the public good of knowledge and education outweigh private enterprise.

Imagine what the current situation would be like, in the hunt for a vaccine, if researchers hadn't bypassed the usual academic publishing route for research. If vital breakthroughs and discoveries were locked up behind paywalls.

In this current emergency, we recognised that open access to knowledge was VITAL. We shouldn't allow that recognition to fade.

Publishers should not be allowed to take advantage of their oligopoly and use out-dated and fallacious arguments to hold educational and research material to ransom, as they are currently doing.

So please, please, sign this open letter! We have to make more people aware of just how outrageous publishers' practice has become and how impoverished our educational & research institutions risk becoming, with more and more material locked out of reach. https://academicebookinvestigation.org/