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Re: Does More Mean More?



David, while there are indeed finite resources in the universe, authors are not among them.

Joe Esposito

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Goodman" <dgoodman@Princeton.EDU>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2006 5:50 PM
Subject: Re: Does More Mean More?

Oddly enough, Joe is correct, but not for the subjects he is writing about. What his view of the factors does apply to, is monographs in the humanities. There is certainly in those fields a lack of publishing opportunities,which can only be met by direct or indirect subsidies. Direct subsidies to the author or the press helps everyone, by making the works possible and perhaps affordable by individuals. The extensive discussion on this has been parallel to the discussions on OA, but remains separate. The key differene is that thereade of a monograph typically expects to read it through, which is not usually the case for a scientific journal (or even a scholarly humanities journal.)

Another specialized area whee he is correct is the publication of large retrospective collections, once on microfilm, now of course elctronic. These are limited by the small number of libraries able to pay the very high costs. (Their current success is the result of grant funding--it's the least controversal way to make grants in politically sensitive areas.)

Science periodicals don't work that way. There has not been a shortage of publishing opportunities for 50 years; people might optimistically start new journals, but this ifsuccessful is just rearranging the same articles--sometimes in a useful way, like some of the Nature monthlies.

Joe has in offline correspondance specified the Annual Review type publication as an example of his thesis; reviews can duplicate the same topics and do not depend on getting some scientific results to publish.

Even here, where it isn't primary scientific publication, he's partially wrong. The rise of the Annual Revew was accompanied by the decline of other review periodicals, such as the many Advances in ... series from Academic Press.

There are ways in which a publisher can add to the total number of articles produced. Most notable is the duplicate publication Phil Davis has so notably detected.

What I think would hapen if library budgets were doubled, is the doubling of prices for the journals.

Dr. David Goodman
Associate Professor
Palmer School of Library and Information Science
Long Island University

dgoodman@liu.edu