Re: National Online: Nature and Others... (like SCIENCE)

[Marjory Waite <waite@email.unc.edu>]

Dr. Watkinson,

I submit some questions regarding your submission. I would like to
understand your position more fully. Thank you for your reply.

Marjory Waite

Anthony Watkinson wrote:
> 
> I am a personal subscriber to Science as an AAAS member. I have access to
> three university libraries but do not "work" in any university. I very
> rarely use the libraries concerned. You cannot tell this from my address.
> I would not wish AAAS to refuse me facilities which they want to give to
> members but cannot afford to do if they have to give them to institutions
> also.

So you think it is reasonable to disenfranchise students, graduate
students, etc.? Were you not in their position at some point in time?
Will they not be future contributors to the journal and isn't access to
it now important?

> When I was a publisher we wondered how to deal with the problem AAAS has.
> A starting point was to look at the addresses of our individual
> subscribers and try to guess how many we would lose if we included the
> particular journal concerned in a consortial offer. This is hopelessly
> unscientific. In all this correspondence I have not seen any clear
> explanation about how a publisher should handle this problem. Loss of
> income is a problem even if it is potential loss of income. Budgets are
> crucial for publishers as they are for libraries.
> 
> Almost all learned societies are desparately worried about how to keep
> their members many of whom are thought to belong mainly for the journal.

Is a "free" journal subscription the only benefit for belonging to a
learned society? I should hope not.

> Commercial publishers who partner with them in their publications
> routinely offer special extras for members only: this is what they are
> asked to do. If they did not provide these facilities the society would go
> to another partner.
> 
> These are three different points and only tangential to what David has
> written but I wonder how they fit in with his very library-centred scheme.
> A system of ethics of information flow based on the library is surely one
> which many authors and users would be unhappy with as much as they should
> be with any system based upon the interests of publishers, even if they
> are not-for-profit and representing the scholarly community. I happen to
> agree with David about the importance of libraries but there are many
> research groups who consider that libraries are irrelevant. They want to
> disintermediate (at least as far as libraries are concerned) because they
> consider that they would get information easier that way.

Again you seem to say that researchers are the only users of scientific
information and libraries. So no one else finds a library and its
collections useful? 

> If members want their publisher to provide something which the publisher
> does not want to provide for libraries and thus for lots of non-members I
> cannot see that this is unethical. On the other hand I cannot see why
> libraries should not try very hard to get this additional content or
> earlier availability either by lobbying or (in the end) cancelling. Both
> actions seem to me to be "ethical" and acting in self-interest.

Were libraries to cancel print subscriptions to important scientific
journals, if that is what you are suggesting, how would you anticipate
that the scientists of the future be prepared to participate fully in
scientific debate and development? Should they wait until they are
"researchers" when they will be able to afford access to learned society
journals?

Marjory Waite