RE: Monopolies (was Elsevier profit)

[Harvey Brenneise <HBrenne@MPHI.org>]

Thanks, Jan, for your comments.

First, I must unfortunately have to agree with you about some so-called
non-profits, which behave in my experience as monopolistically and
greedily as any commercial venture.  American Chemical Society and
American Psychological Association immediately come to mind.  I also had
recent experience with the American Orchid Society, where all of the money
donated "for the library" mysteriously was never available for the library
but apparently went to "overhead" of around 80%!

Jan, how do you see the new open access journals getting the "prestige"
they need to break the back of the monopolies, whether they are
"non-profit" or not?  A lot of this seems related to the ISI "journal
impact factor."  It almost seems to be a chicken and egg thing.

While I don't believe the US government can dictate WHERE something is
published, I do believe it has every right and even an obligation (to the
public health if nothing else) to dictate the conditions of how the
published research that comes out of grants it funds.  Specifically, it
could require that all of it be made available to the public free, as
Medline is now.  I believe it is such a big player (the elephant in the
living room?) that it could make such a requirement stick.  Sure, JAMA can
get it "first" (or Nature or Science), but then it also becomes available
elsewhere.  If publishers don't like it, then so much the better for open
access journals.

Harvey Brenneise
Michigan Public Health Institute
hbrenne@mphi.org