Re: DeepDyve - 99 cent article rentals

[Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>]

I don't want to comment further on DeepDyve's program as I have a 
relationship there, but I find Professor Harnad's perceived irony 
to be misplaced.

OF COURSE, people would find ways to monetize OA content.  What 
did you expect?  And if someone prefers to purchase something 
through "monetized OA" instead of going directly to the free OA 
source, why would anyone want to interfere with an individual's 
preference?  I fail to see the virtue of the top-down, mandated 
policies that Professor Harnad supports.

I recently did a survey of a segment of scholarly book publishers 
and stumbled upon an interesting practice.  One publisher sells 
books directly from its Web site.  All the titles also appear on 
Amazon.  Amazon's prices are less expensive across the board. 
But the publisher continues to do good business from its own 
site.  Why?  Do we ban publishers from selling from their own 
sites and mandate that all sales go to Amazon?

Joe Esposito


On 11/4/09 3:39 PM, "Stevan Harnad" <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:

> Ahmed is quite right. This sort of re-use comes with the
> territory if one adopts a CC attrib license.
>
> It's still ironic that OA content can be used to promote PPV
> which in turn slows the momentum for growth of OA...
>
> Stevan
>
> On 3-Nov-09, at 6:04 PM, Ahmed Hindawi wrote:
>
>> I am surprised that Steven (or anyone else for that matter) is
>> surprised that PLoS content is available on the DeepDyve site.
>> All PLoS articles are published under CC attribution license
>> (which does not prevent commercial reuse), just like most of the
>> major OA journals/publishers. DeepDyve does not even need to take
>> PLoS permission to index, host, or even sell the material on
>> their web site. I am glad DeepDyve is not charging for PLoS
>> articles (or Hindawi articles), but if they did, they would be
>> within their legal rights and would not need to get any
>> permissions from the publisher or the authors (as the copyright
>> holders) in order to do that.
>>
>> Ahmed Hindawi
>>
>> On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 8:42 PM, Stevan Harnad
>> <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>wrote:
>>
>>>> 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