Re: Varmus in the Chronicle (RE: Copyright and OA: New York Times and Chronicle of Higher Education)

[Frederick Friend <ucylfjf@ucl.ac.uk>]

Harold Varmus is right. Maybe his remarks were not reported in full. You
know how journalists cut to the bone! There is no reason why learned
societies should not continue their academic activities under an open
access model, receiving as much income from publication-payments as they
currently receive from subscriptions. Admittedly they will be in a
competitive situation and if they try to charge publication-payments
higher than comparable learned societies, they will lose out, but most
learned societies will not be in the business of charging high
publication-payments for open access. The business model for each learned
society has to be considered separately and for some there may be
alternative sources of income they can develop.

Fred Friend

----- Original Message -----
From: "Rick Anderson" <rickand@unr.edu>
To: "liblicense-l" <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Monday, January 26, 2004 7:57 PM
Subject: Varmus in the Chronicle (RE: Copyright and OA: New York Times and
Chronicle of Higher Education)

> Reading Guterman's fine article in the Chronicle, I was struck by this
> paragraph:
>
> "Dr. Varmus responds, 'It pains me to hear officers of scientific
> societies say, "We can't move to open access because our society will
> fold."' He urges them to adapt to any loss of subscription income by
> finding other ways to raise revenues. 'They shouldn't be surviving by
> denying to their members the virtues of Internet-based open-access
> publication,' he says."
>
> I don't know Dr. Varmus -- is his attitude really this breezy and
> unrealistic?  "Just find the money somewhere else" strikes me as a
> less-than-helpful response to the real-world economic concerns of
> societies for which journal subscriptions have been a major (and perhaps
> THE major) source of revenue.
>
> -------------
> Rick Anderson
> rickand@unr.edu