Re: potential positive spiral in transition to open access

[Peter Banks <pbanks@bankspub.com>]

"The commercial-STM-ghetto"? Even the incendiary Richard Smith 
would not, I hope, be so thoughtless as to compare STM publishers 
with the Judengasse. Equating STM publishers and the brutal 
confinement of Jews over the centuries leading to the Nazi era 
is, to put it mildly, grossly offensive.

In any case, it will be very interesting to see whether your 
proposed growth of non-STM OA publishing will be sustained. Right 
now, "spasmodic" is an accurate term to describe much of the OA 
STM publishing world. That might be perfectly adequate--many of 
the journals in the DOAJ are of regional or local interest, and 
there may be no need for regular publication.

If the emphasis as been on STM, it is because that has been the 
focus of public policy on both sides of the Atlantic. In the US, 
OA has been sold on Capitol Hill as a kind of alchemy which can 
somehow overcome the disastrously anemic state of NIH funding 
(for which, thanks to Mr. Bush's and Mr. Blair's very costly 
little adventure, no solution is in sight.)

Peter Banks
Banks Publishing
Publications Consulting and Services
pbanks@bankspub.com
www.bankspub.com
www.associationpublisher.com/blog/


On 6/29/07 11:24 PM, "Jan Szczepanski" <jan.szczepanski@ub.gu.se> wrote:

> Spasmodically or not there are other ways to look at free 
> e-journals.
>
> First: there are a world outside STM and peer reviewed 
> journals. The world's largest collection of free e-journals can 
> be found at Elektronische Zeitschriften- bibliothek (EZB) or in 
> English Electronic Journals Library
>
> http://rzblx1.uni-regensburg.de/ezeit/about.phtml?bibid=3DAAAAA&colors=3D7&=
> lang=3Den
>
> [SNIP]
>
> Jan Szczepanski
> Goteborgs universitetsbibliotek
> E-mail: Jan.Szczepanski@ub.gu.se
>
>
> Sally Morris (Morris Associates) wrote:
>
>> One has only to look at the DOAJ journals to see how many of them
>> publish very spasmodically and may even have ceased entirely - I
>> and a group of volunteers did an analysis of this last year
>> (http://dx.doi.org/10.1087/095315106775122565)
>>
>> Sally Morris
>> Email:  sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk