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CALIFORNIA STATE UNlVERSlTY, LON G BEACH
UN I VERSITY LI BRA RY

Aug. 1,2016

Thomas H. Allen
President and Chief Executive Officer
Association of American Publishers
455 Massachusetts Ave. NW Suite 700
Washington, D.C. 20001
Dear Mr. Allen,
Thank you for your letter regarding Mr. Gardner, but I believe your strident criticism of him is based on some
fundamental factual inaccuracies. Gabriel Gardner, a faculty member at California State University Long Beach,
along with his co-author Carolyn Caffrey Gardner, a faculty member at California State University Dominguez
Hills, were on an American Library Association (ALA) panel on the future of interlibrary loan in June because of
their research that was published in a 2016 article in College & Research Libraries, a major-and open accessjournal in the field of library science. Their article, "Fast and Furious (at Publishers): The Motivations behind
Crowdsourced Research Sharing," is based on a survey of users of peer-to-peer research-sharing services on the
frequency of, and the motivations behind, their use of these services. They conclude that these services "go
beyond document delivery to the legal bedrock that is our current copyright and intellectual property systems."
So, contrary to your allegations that the researchers provided "public encouragement" of services such as SciHub, their research points out the very real problems with this type of crowdsourcing.
To be clear, neither Mr. Gardner, the University Library, nor the University promote or condone illegal activity,
particularly copyright violation . Instead, Mr. Gardner' s research points out problems faced by libraries,
researchers, and publishers and how some researchers are enabling websites such as Sci-Hub to circumvent the
measures taken by libraries to uphold their copyright licenses. Freedom of research is fundamental to academia
and to your industry. As you say on your website, AAP "invest[s] in the ideas and careers of our authors and
scholars, providing support and protecting their rights, so they can share their unique perspectives with the
world." That is exactly what Mr. Gardner was, and is, doing with his research, which the university
wholeheartedly endorses.
Besides the legal cautions in the C&RL article, Mr. Gardner has been quoted on #icanhazPDF, and in the 2015
Conference Proceedings of the Association of College & Research Libraries as saying that such peer-to-peer
sharing is "ethically dubious" and "often violate[s) commercial database terms-of-service (ToS) and/ or
copyright." Specifically, regarding the ALA annual conference panel, " Resource Sharing in Tomorrowland a Panel
Discussion about the Future of Interlibrary Loan," your paraphrase of Mr. Gardner' s statements is taken very
much out of context. If you listen to the recording of his presentation, he says that Sci-Hub's actions are
" massive piracy" and "totally illegal." To an audience of librarians, he was suggesting that librarians need to try
the service to see how easily Interlibrary Loan and authentication systems can be bypassed .
However, the larger issue here is that the academic publishing model has become unsustainable. Like many
university libraries, the library budgets at California State University Long Beach and the California State

1250 BELLFLOWER BOULEVARD. MS- 1901 · LONG BEACH . CALIFORNIA 90840-1901 · 562/ 985-8472 · FAX 562/985- 1703

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CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, LONG BEACH
UNIVERS ITY LI BR ARY

University generally cannot sustain annual price increases of 3% to 10% by many of your organization's
members. Journal subscription prices are a key part of the reason that extra-legal services, such as Sci-Hub
flourish . As you know, the music industry and the movie industry have faced similar challenges. One substantial
difference with scholarly journal publishing, however, is that the "artists," the scholars who conduct the
research and write the articles, receive no monetary compensation. As the Copyright Clause of the U.S.
Constitution states, the purpose of copyright is "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing
for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." Rarely
do AAP members give their authors such rights.
We would hope that AAP would want to be part of the solution to unsustainable academic publishing models.
Instead of fighting legislation such as Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR), or criticizing
researchers who are shining a light on a very real publishing dilemma, AAP could use its considerable clout to
promote new scientific publishing models. After all, as AAP describes it, the organization's historic role is to
"promote literacy, defend freedom of speech, advance scientific progress, and stimulate the intellectual and
cultural discourse that is central to a healthy democratic society."
Sincerely,

Roman Kochan, Dean of Library Services
University Library
California State University, Long Beach

Cc:

1250 BELLFLOWER BOULEVARD. MS- 1901 · LONG BEACH. CALI FORN IA 90840- 190 1 · 5621985-8472 ·FAX 562/985-1703