Re: Do governments subsidize journals (was: Who gets hurt by Open

[heatherm@eln.bc.ca]

On Sat, 10 Sep 2005 21:06:56 -0400 (EDT) espositoj@gmail.com wrote:

>I think we have a forest-and-the-the-trees problem in this debate over
>whether or not some journals, and the ADA journals in particular, are
>subsidized by the government.

[snip]

To clarify:  Joe, what Dr. Goodman is referring to here is whether the
research that was reported in one issue of Diabetes was sponsored.  
Whether the journal itself, or the ADA, is sponsored by the government or
not is a completely separate question.

What Dr. Goodman's findings tell me is that the research that it described
in Diabetes is generally sponsored either by government, or by a nonprofit
agency, or both.

To me, this reinforces an important concept:  academic publishing is not
the common type of business, in which one sells the fruits of one's own
labor and/or goods and services one has paid for.  Rather, one is selling
the final report of research that many people and organizations have
contributed to:  the researcher(s) and their employers (whether
universities, governments, or industries), as well as the research
funders, and often human research subjects and voluntary associations who
assist in matching researchers with subjects.  Plus volunteer peer
reviewers and sometimes editors too, of course.

My point here is that the results of the research belong in some measure
to all of these groups - the taxpayers, the universities, the researchers,
the funding agencies, the human subjects and the voluntary associations,
which all helped to make the research possible.

Dissemination of research results needs to serve the needs of all these
groups - but most especially, in the case of diabates, the needs of
persons with diabetes above all.

Publishers could post the final peer-reviewed copy of an article the
moment it is available, and/or strongly encourage the author to
self-archive such a copy as soon as possible.

This would be the optimum way to meet the needs of people with diabetes;
as soon as one study is complete, another group of researchers can make
use of the results and carry on with the next steps.  For the person with
diabetes, this maximizes the odds that a better treatment or cure will be
found before the disease causes them more damage.

Assuming that the reason for existence of the American Diabetes
Association is to better the lives of those with diabetes, to me it is
obvious that ADA will completely embrace open access, just as soon as it
is understood how OA is the best possible means to achieve the ADA's
mission.

If this seems like a financial challenge, perhaps some research should be
done to find out why people join an association llike ADA, and what they
think is more important:  research and better treatment - or publishing
profits to fund the ADA's other laudable programs?

Many thanks to Dr. Goodman for his very helpful analysis.

cheers,

Heather Morrison

On 7/27/05, David Goodman <David.Goodman@liu.edu> wrote:

Dear Peter,

I have, as you suggested, looked at the funding sources for your authors.
In the most recent issue of "Diabetes," July 2005, there are 40 articles.

20 of them have one or more US government sponsors
21 have one of more non-US governmental sponsors
 7 have one or more US non-profit organization sponsors
 20 have one or more non-US non-profit sponsors,
 2 have one or more US industry sponsors
 10 have one or more non-US industry sponsors.
 
of these 40,

2 have only industry sponsors
9 are either NIH internal authors, or have only NIH as a sponsor,

(Many had multiple sponsorships; I did not count author addresses as
sponsors unless no sponsor was listed.)
 
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
Associate Professor
Palmer School of Library and Information Science
Long Island University
dgoodman@liu.edu