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

["Hamaker, Chuck" <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>]

Jan Velterop wrote:

> 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'?

The majority of publications from the US are academic authors. About 73%
overall of ISI's base list or scholarly articles published by US at least
in 1999 were from academia. That varies by field,.

Social and behavorial sciences	85.7%
Mathematics	91.9%
Engineering and technology	63.3%
Earth and space sciences	65.2%
Physics	70.5%
Chemistry	76.6%
Biology	75.2%
Biomedical research	77.0%
Clinical medicine	68.9%
All fields	73.5%

Source: NSF http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/seind02/c5/fig05-38.xls
http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/seind02/c5/fig05-38.htm (for a chart)

But there are lots of caveats. US and UK research articles production were
in decline (-1.5 US)(-0.2 UK)  from 1995-1999.  
http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/seind02/c5/fig05-34.htm

Similarly Canadian authored articles declined as did the Netherlands. The
traditional purchasers and authors seem to be in decline, while there is
strong growth in other areas worldwide, Western Europe in particular overall
as well as some Asian and a few Latin American countries. For a particularly
stunning graph see:

http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/seind02/c5/fig05-33.htm

Output of scientific and technical papers for the U.S. and OECD: 1986-99
Since 1986 US output is down -8%.

Industrial research tends to be applied, and produces patents. But it
builds according to most studies, on basic research from academe.

So why doesn't the non-academic sector account for more subscriptions?  
Regards Chuck