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RE: Journals, society activities and the zero-sum game

At 06:29 PM 7/29/2004 -0400, Rick Anderson wrote:


The underlying issue is real, though: where OA is mandatory but author
charges are not dictated from above, there will be a powerful incentive
for publishers to compete for authors by lowering charges.  Eventually
the only journals to survive would be those that can subsidize their
costs from other sources.  And then aren't we back where we started?)

Yes, it looks very much like a traditional publishing model that begins
with both moderate subscription fees and page charges and ends up with
high subscription fees and zero page charges.  Substitute "membership" for
"subscription" and "author-fees" for "page charges", and the model looks
pretty much the same.  Seems like we've already arrived back where we
started with one prominent OA publisher.

--Phil Davis

Philip Davis, Life Sciences Bibliographer
Mann Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853
(607) 255-7192 ;  (607) 255-0318 fax
pmd8@cornell.edu
http://people.cornell.edu/pages/pmd8/