As you report, academic publishing is doing surprisingly well in an impoverished field of business (“Of Goats and Headaches,” May 28, 2011). In fact, academic publishers like Elsevier, Taylor and Francis, and Springer are doing exceedingly well. “Academic authors tend not to care much about copyright protection,” you point out. “Their main interest is in being read and cited.” Indeed, citation indices are the key to the game nowadays. First, academic promotion is getting ever more bureaucratic, and citation indices are there to tell winners and losers apart. Second, there is a growing number of academics on “soft contracts,” which ensure them a job as long as they are getting research money, which in turn depends on citation indices once again. Interestingly, you pointed this out only recently, when you argued that doctoral degrees are a dime a dozen (“The Disposable Academic,” December 18, 2010). Many of the bedeviled academics are from poor countries hoping to earn a living in rich ones. To wit, the increasing competition for academic jobs is leading to a bonanza in academic publishing. Surprise, surprise.