Re: Who isn't being heard in the Open Access debate?

["Joseph J. Esposito" <espositoj@worldnet.att.net>]

Jan's point is a good one, especially in its tonic ability to unsettle
assumptions.  But it serves to make me uncomfortable with the drift of the
discussion, as it is hard to generalize about many aspects of publishing,
and I think we have one of those aspects here.  Publishing is unlike many
industries in that most of its products are very small, when measured in
revenue.  There are no billion-dollar properties (the COMPLETE Harry
Potter series may reach that, but not any single title).  Contrast this
with a really important (!) industry like soft drinks or skateboards.  
Even the Elsevier colossus, everybody's whipping boy, is made up of a huge
number of small publications, each with its own editors, its own
readership, its own set of strategic business issues.

So when we try to determine who are the "free riders" of research
publishing, we really have to look at this atomistically.  Different
journals will have different sales mixes between academic and commercial
accounts, and journals may have revenue streams beyond subscriptions.  I
don't believe we can identify a "representative" journal.

Joe Esposito

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jan Velterop" <velterop@biomedcentral.com>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Monday, May 10, 2004 2:13 PM
Subject: RE: Who isn't being heard in the Open Access debate?

> With regard to industrial vs. academic downloads to BMC material I refer
> to my posting of May 4th 2004.
>
> Might the figures you are bringing to our attention now infer that in an
> Open Access environment, Academia rather than industry could actually be
> the 'freeloaders'?
>
> Jan Velterop