Correction and expansion of aspects of Rick Weiss' article on

["Michael A. Keller" <Michael.Keller@stanford.edu>]

PLoS
 in Washington Post 5 August 2003
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Stanford University Libraries
&
Academic Information Resources

6 August 2003

To: Editor of the Washington Post
Re: Rick Weiss article of 5 August "A Fight for Free Access To Medical 
Research Online Plan Challenges Publishers' Dominance"

Rick Weiss reports some aspects of the serials crisis, now over 20 
years old.  He has not provided sufficient facts to understand the 
situation and focuses upon a yet-to-be-proven experiment, Public 
Library of Science (PloS), proposed as solution to the crisis.  He 
implied, falsely, that I am an advocate of PloS.  Like many 
knowledgeable, engaged professionals in the scholarly communication 
arena, I advocate not-for-profit publishing by scientific societies as 
a far superior solution.  To set the record straight, here are some 
more facts and alternate opinions.

1.	The lead paragraphs of the story refer to an article in Science 
Magazine found by parents searching HighWire Press' index 
(http://highwire.stanford.edu) for new speech therapies for their 
child.  They found an abstract of a news report in Science Magazine of 
a new therapy, then paid just $10 to purchase access to that news 
report on-line, leading them ultimately to acquire a cd-rom and 
instructions on the new therapy.  It apparently worked for them and 
they were grateful to have been able to discover it so expeditiously.  
The system worked well for them and inexpensively too, as it has for 
many others.  Contrast that price to the $50 or $60 charged by many for-
profit publishers mentioned, but not qualified in Rick Weiss' report.  
And most non-profit publishers charge only nominal fees and provide 
convenient access to on-line articles.  The story was not meant to be 
supportive of the PloS experiment (see below), but actually and 
explicitly supportive of the responsible non-profit publishers who have 
provided so much access so inexpensively to the general public while 
maintaining their self-sustaining, not-for-profit status.

2.	No not-for-profit publisher charges anything like the prices 
driving the outrageous profits of Elsevier and some of their colleague 
for-profit publishers.

3.	Science and Nature magazines are excellent examples of 
reasonably priced scientific journals, containing both news and reports 
from scientists. Each costs about $100.00 per year for personal 
subscriptions.  Science Magazine offers its table of contents and 
abstracts free upon publication and articles are free after they are 12 
months old. Nature, for the record, is a for-profit publication.

4.	HighWire Press is an excellent example of the alternative to 
PLoS.  It is a high-quality, successful, and not-for profit Internet 
publishing service part of the Stanford University Libraries. The 
nearly 120 not-for-profit publishers associated with HighWire Press 
offer the largest free collection of articles in the world in the life 
sciences and medicine, currently almost 600,000 free articles.  
Abstracts of all articles from these publishers are free on HighWire.

5.	The Public Library of Science is proposing, with subsidy from 
the Moore Foundation, a business model known as "authors pay".  Over 
the past 15 years, there have been and are still a few journals 
attempting to operate using this model.  Not one has become 
economically viable; none are self-sustaining.

6.	The not-for-profit scientific societies as journal publishers 
offer good value for reasonable charges and are directly responsible to 
their members.  They also have supported innovation in electronic 
publishing and in business models.  Now, with increased capacities to 
publish truly peer reviewed articles on the Internet, they can expand 
their offerings; indeed many have already.  Authors should send their 
articles first to their societies' journals and not feed the exploitive 
practices of the Elseviers of the world.  And institutions should 
consider supporting numerous open access archives, such as the former 
LANL.xxx one for physics; this sort of publishing might suffice for 
many of the articles now cascading down into irresponsible commercial 
publishers' omnivorous, bloated engines of profit.

7.	The Sabo legislation would not loosen copyright restrictions, 
it would disenfranchise authors whose research had been supported by 
federal funding.  And at least one possible result of this pending 
legislation could be the demise of the not-for-profit publishing 
enterprises of the scientific and medical societies, ironically the 
most responsible and responsive parts of the scientific, technical and 
medical publishing community.

8.	Despite my colleague John McCarthy's statement about 
information monopolies, no library and no individual is required to 
acquire very expensive journals. By failing to cancel journals not 
providing good value for their costs, librarians have perpetuated the 
problem.  In the absence of market driven analyses and making difficult 
decisions, we have given rise to a situation where whining for free 
access to all articles, regardless of quality, appears principled.  
This could produce a system of scholarly communication controlled and 
regulated by the government, something urgently to be rejected, or 
information chaos or both.  To avert this disaster, librarians and 
their home institutions should support and encourage responsive and 
responsible publishers of scientific articles, namely, not-for-profit, 
scholarly societies.

Thank you for publishing these remarks correcting and expanding parts 
of Rick Weiss' article.

Yours truly,

MAK

-^~-^~-^~-^~-^~-^~-^~-^~-^~-^~-^~-^~-^~-^~-^~
Michael A. Keller
  University Librarian
  Director of Academic Information Resources
  Publisher of HighWire Press
  Publisher of Stanford University Press
Stanford University

101 Green Library
Stanford, CA 94305-6004
U.S.A.

voice:     +1-650-723-5553
fax:       +1-650-725-4902
e-fax:     +1-928-244-4070
e-mail:    Michael.Keller@Stanford.edu
homepage:  http://highwire.stanford.edu/~mkeller/