No, but there is a booming industry in pirated textbooks
around
the world, as the February 11 report of the International
Intellectual Property Alliance reveals: http://www.iipa.co.
Students in developing countries are not lacking access to
such
books, but they are generating no income for U.S. authors
and
publishers.
Sandy Thatcher
Penn State University Press
>An important argument in favor of Open Access is the
observation
>that authors of journal articles seek no pecuniary
reward and are
>indeed interested mainly in seeing broadest possible
>dissemination, use, and impact of their work, and the
movement
>capitalizes well on that basic motivation. In at least
one
>publishing domain, however, academics are indeed
interested in
>the money: textbooks. On all sides, students complain
about the
>high prices of textbooks, but they keep going up. Does
anyone
>know of Open Access initiatives designed to bring high
quality
>current science textbooks to students in universities in
the
>developing world? Movement in that direction could have
very
>positive impact on millions of students in emerging
societies.
>
>Jim O'Donnell
>Georgetown U.
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