RE: Elsevier profit

[Harvey Brenneise <HBrenne@MPHI.org>]

Jan, I agree that it's about economics.  However, one should not forget
that there are and have been for a long time quite a number of non-profit
publishers of journals who are under no pressure at all to create profits
for shareholders.  Many of these are in disciplines where there is no
"funding pressure" (such as the humanities) to pay for increases in price
that are unrelated to change in cost of production.  But it is difficult
for libraries to walk away from the monopolies, and so they are caught.
Frankly, if the US Government simply dictated that all research resulting
from federal grants had to be freely available to the public who paid for
it would put a big hole in publisher monopolies.

Sincerely,
Harvey Brenneise
Michigan Public Health Institute