Re: Thoughts on the House of Commons report

["\"FrederickFriend\"" <ucylfjf@ucl.ac.uk>]

I agree with Adam that learned society programs in support of their
subjects are very valuable. Where I disagree is that these programs willl
disappear under open access. There is no reason why an open access
publication charge should not be set at a reasonable level to allow those
programs to continue. JISC wants to work with learned societies on this
question.

Fred Friend

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Adam Chesler" <a_chesler@acs.org>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Thursday, July 22, 2004 10:43 PM
Subject: RE: Thoughts on the House of Commons report

> I'll only comment on point #5:  learned societies offer numerous benefits
> beyond subsidized journals.  And that wide range of benefits, to members
> and to research at large (via educational programs and the like) are
> largely funded by journal subscriptions.  Remove those journals and those
> subscriptions -- and the relatively modest surplus they generate -- and
> you eliminate those programs as well.  It's facile to assume that funding
> from alternative sources (meetings, advertising) are easily substituted:
> if they were, subscription costs to society publications would be even
> less than they are now.
>
> The point is, there's more to a society than pumping out journal issues.
>
> The question that I keep coming back to is, is the problem with the
> subscription model, or is the raw expense associated with paying for it?
> And if it's the latter, then open access (at least as currently
> defined/practiced) won't resolve the problem, because the money presently
> available to institutions for buying published material isn't going to
> increase when it's used to subsidize the publication of that material via
> "memberships."  Most society journals represent a reasonable cost and
> generate modest surpluses that go right back into the community.
> Discarding the model, and removing that source of funding, eliminates far
> more than annual access fees.
>
> Adam Chesler
> American Chemical Society
> a_chesler@acs.org