[Lingtyp] Ethnologue goes for paid access

[Martin Haspelmath]

Yes, that's true, and here's the description: 
http://www.ethnologue.com/ethnoblog/m-paul-lewis/ethnologue-launches-subscription-service

They say you can access seven data pages per month for free.

I don't find this surprising. Ethnologue (and the entire academic branch 
of SIL) has no proper academic funding, so it's normal that they are 
trying to make some money out of their flagship publication.

Incidentally, Glottolog has no proper funding either, but as it is now 
hosted by MPI-SHH in Jena 
(http://www.shh.mpg.de/48816/research_outline), at least its continued 
existence is assured for the next dozen years or so.

(I think we should try to tell our administrators that it makes little 
sense to try to sell academic publications. Instead, they should by 
properly funded by the academic publishers themselves, in order not to 
drive academics even further into questionable practices 
<http://www.frank-m-richter.de/freescienceblog/2015/12/18/is-our-scholarship-based-on-illegal-foundations/>.)

Martin

On 30.12.15 22:16, Peter Arkadiev wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> does any one know whether the access to the Ethnologue is going to be by paid subscription only? When trying to routinely access the information about a random language, I got a screen advertising paid subscription for $60 per year, and there is no way to bypass it and get access to the information which was freely available a week ago. This looks pretty distressing.
>
> Best,
>
> Peter
>

-- 
Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at shh.mpg.de)
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10	
D-07745 Jena
&
Leipzig University
Beethovenstrasse 15
D-04107 Leipzig





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