SEMINAR: The Most Profitable Obsolete Technology in History: How the 25-billion dollar a year academic publishing industry is thriving in the digital era

The Seminar: On December 18 1995, Forbes predicted academic publisher Elsevier’s relevancy and life in the digital age to be short lived. 20-years later, the academic publishing oligopoly that Elsevier leads is thriving with an annual revenue of $25.2 billion at profit margins higher than Apple, inc. This seminar will discuss how academic publishers maintain their relevance when almost all other media industries have been disrupted by the advent of the internet. We will also explore history’s attempts at academic publishing reform, including PLoS, funding bodies’ open access mandates, The Cost of Knowledge petition, the Schekman Boycott and, most recently, Alexandra Elbakyan’s Sci-Hub.io. Finally we aim to understand why – despite countless initiatives – none of the billions of dollars profited from academic journal sales are returned to the research industry, and why knowledge isn’t openly accessible to those who cannot afford exorbitant journal subscription fees.

The Speaker: Anton Lucanus (BSc, UWA) recently completed his Honours project at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore with funding from the Australian Government's New Colombo Plan. He has a passion for tech entrepreneurship and has previously co-founded two startups: Neliti.com and Rukamen.com. Anton believes access to knowledge is a fundamental human right, and is dedicating his career to developing technologies that increase open access to academic content and provide royalties to researchers for their work.