Re: Re Matt Cockerill's comments

["Joseph J. Esposito" <espositoj@gmail.com>]

I agree with Richard Feinman about the pricing for author-pays 
publications, but I doubt the article will become the unit of 
scientific communication. Journals have integrity.  It's 
different in the (popular) music business. Few albums hold 
together; popular music is a great form, but its range is narrow, 
making the single tune the preferred format.  (In any event, 
before the Beatles single records were the bulk of the music 
business.  It could be said that the current focus on individual 
tunes is a return to pre-Beatles formats and economics.)

It will be hard to call attention to individual articles without 
the "wrapper" of a branded journal.  This is a marketing problem, 
and it will hold true for scientific publications whether they 
are toll access or open access.

Joe Esposito

----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Feinman" <RFeinman@downstate.edu>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Sunday, March 25, 2007 6:06 PM
Subject: Re Matt Cockerill's comments


> This is a remarkably ironic comment from the publisher who is
> constantly trying to raise the Author Pay Charge on BMC journals.
> Authors are also customers and therefore, under conditions where
> publishers "will charge as much as they can in order to maximize
> their revenues,... The customer (the research community"
> including Authors) "can choose the publication service that
> offers the best value,"  so that when BMC finally raises the APC
> on all of its journals, the only Authors who will find value in
> new journals without an established reputation will be those who
> need to publish at any price.
>
> A reasonable goal is that the article, not the journal, is the
> unit of scientific quality, analogous to the trend towards
> downloading of single songs rather than the sale of albums in the
> music world.  Although this will never be universal and authors
> may continue to be willing to pay for being published in prestige
> journals, high author fees will not generally be considered good
> value.
>
> In the end, the implementation of OA will be with efficient
> operations like Scholarly Exchange or those who use OJS.  This
> will require more investment of energy at startup by the editors
> but in the end BMC will provide only a limited solution to the
> publication problem by substituting avarice at a different point
> than than the subscription end.
>
> Richard D. Feinman, Co-editor-in-chief
> Nutrition & Metabolism ( http://www.nutritionandmetabolism.com/home )
>
> Articles published within a day or two of acceptance.
> Indexed PubMed, PubMed Central, ISI Thomson.
>
> ________________
>
>
> "Matthew Cockerill" <matt@biomedcentral.com>
> 03/21/07 06:03 PM
> Please respond to liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Subject Re: the Yale argument on open-choice
>
> Is it not clear, though, that price inflation is an expected
> consequence of the subscription model?
>
> If the research community hands over ownership/exclusive rights
> to publishers, it is economically predictable that publishers
> (whether commercial or not-for-profit) will charge as much as
> they can in order to maximize their revenues. Given that the
> academic community *really* needs access to that research, there
> is virtually no upper bound on what publishers with enough market
> power can get away with charging for subscriptions . The natural
> solution to this is surely for the research community *not* to
> give away the ownership/exclusive rights to the research.
>
> Under an open access publishing model, you immediately have a
> much more effective market. The customer (the research community)
> can choose the publication service that offers the best value,
> ensuring that prices are kept down. This kind of
> 'substitutability' generally doesn't exist with the subscription
> model - hence the problem of journal inflation.
>
> Matt Cockerill
> BioMed Central