RE: DeepDyve - 99 cent article rentals

["Sally Morris \(Morris Associates\)" <sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk>]

I think this is a really interesting experiment - it has a 
substantial list of publishers and journals on board, although 
not all allow viewing of the full articles.

Not all the journals are immediately freely available from the 
publisher's site;  for those that are (e.g. delayed OA - they 
don't charge for OA journals) the experiment tests the 
acceptability of an i-Tunes level of pricing for convenience 
alone.  If not, then it could also help to encourage other 
publishers to significantly lower their PPV price on the basis of 
'rental' (i.e. read-only, over 24 hrs) rather than sale.  I have 
long thought that an iTunes approach (in terms of both 
convenience and price point) might open up the market for 
individual articles - this could actually begin to tell us the 
answer...

Given that we know researchers prefer the published article if 
they can get it, and that universal OA is not going to be here 
any time soon, I for one find this a very positive development. 
I just wonder why Google hasn't done it first!

Sally Morris
Email: sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
Sent: 30 October 2009 18:42
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: DeepDyve - 99 cent article rentals

> DeepDyve - iTunes comes to Science Publishing
> http://j.mp/tZIdF

I'm surprised PLoS would agree to provide its content as part of
the perks for a pay-per-view scheme. This gives "re-use" a whole
new dimension.

DeepDyve is of course doomed (by OA), but OA is going about its
inevitable destiny so glacially slowly that there's probably time
for a few bucks to be made out of this absurd scheme (motivated
by the equally absurd pricing practices of classical
pay-per-view).

Just surprised to see PLoS along for the ride. (Since they make
no money out of it, it is presumably for the sake of eyeballs,
but they're reaching those current eyeballs at the cost of
prolonging the darkness for far more future ones. It's not even
like a pay-to-pollute scheme, in that it's not self-limiting but
self-perpetuating...

Stevan Harnad