Re: Journals, society activities and the zero-sum game (RE: Thoughts on the House of Commons report (Chesler)

["Sally Morris \(ALPSP\)" <chief-exec@alpsp.org>]

The so-called 'library crisis' is not *primarily* caused by high prices
(whether these result in high profits is irrelevant as far as the effect
on libraries' ability to maintain their collections is concerned);  it is
caused by the continuing expansion in research funding and, thus, in the
outputs of such funding - research articles.  Even if prices were reduced,
the mismatch between this expansion and the much lower (if any) growth in
library budgets would still cause a problem.

One of the attractions of Open Access journals is that the funds for
publication should, in principle, keep pace with the funds for research
(which isn't to say that there are not many difficult questions still to
answer about whether it will work across the board)

Sally Morris, Chief Executive
Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers
E-mail:  chief-exec@alpsp.org

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David L. Osterbur" <dosterbu@mcb.harvard.edu>
Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2004 1:08 AM
Subject: RE: Journals, society activities and the zero-sum game (RE:
Thoughts on the House of Commons report (Chesler)

> >Rick Anderson wrote, " ... there's a potentially valid argument to be
> >made there.  But let's not pretend that mandatory OA won't hurt
> >societies."
>
> Let's also not pretend that the excess profit-taking from scientific
> journals has not already hurt libraries and open scientific communication.
>
> David L. Osterbur, Ph.D.
> Librarian
> BioLabs Library
> Harvard University