RE: Varmus in the Chronicle

["RAPPAZ Francois" <francois.rappaz@unifr.ch>]

Like many others in this list, I hope that Mr. Esposito's picture will be
wrong. Informing scientists about how and why, and telling them that
choosing Cell or PNAS is not only an impact factor question but also a
political choice is vital if we want to get ride of the present
monopolistic situation.

The german's support to opensource softwares is a politic decision, as
could be a a governement's support to open access in scholarly
communication. OA titles should not be confined to emerging areas, but
should compete with established titles. Informing authors will help to
achieve that.

Fran�ois Rappaz
Centre de documentation de la Facult� des Sciences 
Universit� de Fribourg- Switzerland

> In my view, OA is least useful in areas where there are established 
> proprietary journals, for the reasons that are endlessly cited
> (market entrenchment, brand recognition, stubbornness of tenure 
> committees, etc.). OA, on the other hand, is uniquely suited for 
> emerging areas of study, where the proprietary publishers have not yet 
> staked out an interest for the simple and obvious reason that 
> there is no money in a market that does not yet exist.  For 
> an emerging discipline, OA serves the people who benefit 
> most, the researchers and authors, who are trying to get 
> their new discipline on the map and are motivated to pay to 
> do it.  An interesting question is whether such OA journals 
> will switch and become proprietary once the discipline is established.
...
>Joseph J. Esposito