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

[Jan Velterop <velterop@biomedcentral.com>]

Chuck,

Thanks for these interesting details. Regarding your last sentence: "So
why doesn't the non-academic sector account for more subscriptions?",
could it be that industry generally takes a more 'just-in-time' than a
'just-in-case' approach to the acquisition of scientific literature? They
may not feel the need to have a wide collection, or indeed, any
*collection* at all, and may be quite happy to rely on docdel for
individual articles and on e-only for the subscriptions they do have. In
the process they may save themselves a lot of money.

Industry as a whole probably does contribute less than their fair share to
the cost of scientific communication, in relation to the benefits they
get. Perhaps they can be induced to contribute towards the cost of a
generally advantageous open access system for those who may have a problem
with the article processing fee model. I'm thinking of poorly funded
authors particularly from the developing world.

On the point of authors not being able to find the funds for open access,
we should be careful not to lose perspective. Many subscription journals
charge authors as well, for instance for colour plates (a single colour
plate in Cell costs $1000 -- or about two full articles with as many
colour plates you like in one of the BioMed Central journals), reprints,
page charges, et cetera.

Best,

Jan
www.biomedcentral.com


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Hamaker, Chuck [mailto:cahamake@email.uncc.edu]
> Sent: 11 May 2004 06:46
> To: 'Jan Velterop '; ''liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu' '
> Subject: RE: Who isn't being heard in the Open Access debate?
> 
> 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