Scientific publishing has long been a licence to print money.
【生词】licencen.许可, 许可证, 放纵, 放荡
print money印钞
【翻译】科学出版业长期以来一直被视为一种赚钱的途径。
Scientists need journals in which to publish their research, so they will supply the articles without monetary reward.
【生词】monetaryadj.货币的，金钱的
【翻译】科学家需要期刊来发表其研究成果，因此他们将无偿提供相关论文。
【解析】in which引导定语从句修饰前方的journals
Other scientists perform the specialised work of peer review also for free, because it is a central element in the acquisition of status and the production of scientific knowledge.
【生词】 specialisedadj.专门的, 特别的, 专科的
【翻译】其他科学家同样免费参与同行评审这一专业性工作，因为该过程是获取学术地位及产出科学知识的核心环节。
With the content of papers secured for free, the publisher needs only find a market for its journal.
【翻译】由于论文内容可免费获取，出版商只需为其期刊寻找市场即可。
Until this century, university libraries were not very price sensitive.
【生词】 sensitiveadj.体贴的, 艺术感觉好的, 易生气的, 敏感的
【翻译】在本世纪之前，高校图书馆对价格并不十分敏感。Scientific publishers routinely report profit margins approaching 40% on their operations at a time when the rest of the publishing industry is in an existential crisis.
【生词】 routinelyadv.例行公事地, 常规地，惯常地, 老一套地
profit marginn.利润率
existentialadj.有关存在的，存在主义的，存在判断的
【翻译】在出版业其他领域正面临生存危机之际，科学类出版机构的业务利润率通常高达 40%。
The Dutch giant Elsevier, which claims to publish 25% of the scientific papers produced in the world, made profits of more than £900m last year, while UK universities alone spent more than £210m in 2016 to enable researchers to access their own publicly funded research; both figures seem to rise unstoppably despite increasingly desperate efforts to change them.
【生词】desperate adj.拼命的, 孤注一掷的, 绝望的
【翻译】荷兰巨头爱思唯尔宣称其出版了全球25%的科学论文；该公司去年实现利润超过9亿英镑；而仅英国高校在2016年就投入了逾2.1亿英镑，以支持研究人员获取其自身由公共资金资助的研究成果；尽管各方正竭力扭转这一趋势，但上述两项数字似乎仍在持续攀升。
The most drastic, an thoroughly illegal, reaction has been the emergence of Sci-Hub, a kind of global photocopier for scientific papers, set up in 2012, which now claims to offer access to every paywalled article published since 2015.
【生词】drasticadj.极端的
emergencen.出现, 兴起
photocopier n.影印机, 复印机
paywalledadj. 付费墙的，有付费内容的
【翻译】最激进且完全属于非法的反应，便是 Sci-Hub 的出现——这是一家成立于 2012 年的全球性科学论文复制平台，目前声称可提供对自 2015 年以来发表的所有设有付费墙的文章的访问权限。
The success of Sci-Hub, which relies on researchers passing on copies they have themselves legally accessed, shows the legal ecosystem has lost legitimacy among its users and must be transformed so that it works for all participants.
【生词】 legitimacyn.合法（性），正统（性）, 合理
【翻译】Sci-Hub的成功——该平台依赖研究人员转交其本人合法获取的副本——表明，当前的法律生态系统在用户中已失去公信力，亟需进行改革，以确保其能够惠及所有参与者。
In Britain the move towards open access publishing has been driven by funding bodies. In some ways it has been very successful.
【翻译】在英国，开放获取出版模式的推广是由各类资助机构推动的；在某些方面，这一举措取得了显著成效。
More than half of all British scientific research is now published under open access terms: either freely available from the moment of publication, or paywalled for a year or more so that the publishers can make a profit before being placed on general release.
【生词】 general release全面发行; 公众开放
【翻译】目前，英国超过半数的科学研究成果均按照开放获取模式发表：要么自发表之日起即可免费获取；要么设置为期一年或更长时间的付费墙，以便出版商在成果正式向公众开放之前实现盈利。
Yet the new system has not yet worked out any cheaper for the universities.
【翻译】然而，这一新系统尚未为各高校带来任何成本降低的效果。Publishers have responded to the demand that they make their product free to readers by charging their writers fees to cover the costs of prep ring an article.
【翻译】出版商为满足读者免费阅读其产品的需求，对作者收取稿费，以覆盖文章编辑与排版所产生的费用。
These range from around £500 to $5,000, and apparently the work gets more expensive the more that publishers do it.
【生词】apparentlyadv.据说, 好像，看来，显然
【翻译】这些费用范围约为 500 英镑至 5,000 美元；显然，出版商开展此类工作的次数越多，费用就越高。
A report last year pointed out that the costs both of subscriptions and of these “article preparation costs” had been steadily rising at a rate above inflation.
【生词】 subscriptionn.订阅费，订阅，订购, 捐款
inflationn.通货膨胀
【翻译】去年的一份报告指出，订阅费用以及这些“文章制备成本”均在以高于通货膨胀率的速度持续上涨。
In some ways the scientific publishing model resembles the economy of the social internet: labour is provided free in exchange for the hope of status, while huge profits are made by a few big firms who run the market places. In both cases, we need a rebalancing of power.
【生词】 resemblev.相似
【翻译】在某些方面，科学出版模式与社交互联网的经济模式颇为相似：劳动者无偿提供劳动力，以换取获得社会地位的期望；而由少数几家运营市场平台的大型企业则从中获取巨额利润。在这两种情形下，我们都需要对权力结构进行重新平衡。