Re: Fair use (RE: electronic journals CCC)

[Keith Seitter <kseitter@ametsoc.org>]

I would like to respond back to this comment because it is one I hear a
lot within the academic community and I think it is completely incorrect.

An institution is not "buying back" its own research and it is not "paying
twice" for the results coming from its scholarly researchers.  When an
institution purchases a subscription to a journal, it is paying for access
to the results coming from research at OTHER institutions, prefiltered for
quality and packaged in an easy to use format (whether that is print or
electronic or both).  Since research at an institution by its scholars is
critically dependent on building upon the work of others, the acquisition
of that work in a form that provides efficient utilization is a wholly
appropriate use for a portion of the funds used to support that research
(no different than securing a needed piece of equipment). The view by some
university administrators that libraries are only part of research
dissemination and not fundamental to the research enterprise itself (and
need not be funded accordingly) is abetted by this "paying twice"
argument.

I will only marginally address the "moral obligation" to make the journal
content "free" after some period of time by saying that some of us in the
nonprofit publishing world are running at extremely tight margins so that
we can keep the institutional subscription prices as low as possible.  
For us, anything that seriously jeopardizes a source of income jeopardizes
our ability to continue publishing journals.  For journals like ours,
where the results published are not time critical at the scale of a few
months and whose citation half-life is over ten years, it is likely that
many subscribers would drop paid subscriptions if they could have free
access after six months (or even a year).  Our "moral obligation" as a
scientific and professional society is to produce the journals as a means
of dissemination of knowledge.  Much as we might love to be in a position
to give this all away, we need to maintain a revenue stream sufficient to
continue producing the journals or we will not be able to continue our
mission.

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Dr. Keith L. Seitter               phone:  617-227-2426 ext. 220
Deputy Executive Director          fax:    617-742-8718
American Meteorological Society    e-mail: kseitter@ametsoc.org
45 Beacon Street
Boston, MA 02108-3693              http://www.ametsoc.org/AMS
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At 12:31 AM 5/14/01 -0400, you wrote:
>Dear List!
>
>Another argument often is also not mentioned:
>
>Most of the scientific work done for a publication is financed by public
>grants. So the libraries in the universities have to "bought back" their
>own results spending public funds again. Using this system the scientific
>community has to pay twice for getting their results, i.e. advancement of
>science and knowledge. Is there no 'moral obligation' that these results
>should be (say, after a waiting period of about 6 or 12 month) in public
>domain?
>
>Best regards,
>
>- Karl-Josef Ziegler