RE: Open Access to Research Is Inevitable, Libraries Are Told

[Jean-Claude Gu�don <jean.claude.guedon@umontreal.ca>]

I very much agree with Sandy's message below, but it is 
tangential to our discussion. It is a helpful message, 
nonetheless, because it reminds us that many social and 
institutional have a sense of optimal behaviour that does not 
coincide with optimal economic behaviour. It is this tyranny of 
the economic paradigm that I find objectionable in the context of 
scholarly publishing. This does not mean not opaying attention to 
finances, but it means not being a hostage to various forms of 
economic modelling (that turn out not to be so good after all) 
and market fundamentalism.
jcg

Le lundi 01 mars 2010, Sandy Thatcher a ecrit :
[Hide Quoted Text]
> To be fair, there may be good reasons to employ grad students to
> help publish journals, among them the experience that they get in
> working in this environment that may help advance their own
> careers later. This is also true for university presses that use
> undergraduate student interns, as we do at Penn State; we
> consider it part of our mission to provide such learning
> experiences for students on our campus, and a number have gone on
> to careers in publishing. The costs of training them are absorbed
> by the Press, but they are real costs; our mission being not to
> make a profit, however, but to serve scholarship and contribute
> to education in other ways, we regard this as justifiable even
> though not strictly the most efficient way to run a business.
>
> Sandy Thatcher