Re: Licence restrictions

[Johannes/Lucie Velterop von Leyden <Velteropvonleyden@btinternet.com>]

Can I suggest to Ninan Chacko to take a look at BioMed Central
(www.biomedcentral.com) where all primary research articles in Biology and
Medicine are absolutely freely accessible to the reader. No passwords, no
registration necessary, no IP address authentication, just free. To
anyone, anywhere. They are freely downloadable for inclusion in electronic
library collections.

How is it paid for? From January BioMed Central intends to charge authors
for article peer review and for professional preparation of the articles
for publication on the Internet. About $500 per article. That is about one
tenth of what academic libraries in aggregate pay for each article
published the conventional way. All articles published on BioMed Central
are also included in PubMedCentral and indexed in PubMed.

Check it out, and encourage researchers to publish with BioMed Central and
make their contributions to science and medicine freely available to all,
anywhere in the world.

Jan Velterop
Publisher BioMed Central
www.biomedcentral.com

> From: "Ninan Chacko" <ninan@cmcvellore.ac.in>
> Reply-To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Date: Fri,  9 Nov 2001 19:27:09 EST
> To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
> Subject: Re: Licence restrictions
>
> And I thought only we had problems.
>
> I cannot but agree with the sentiments. It is not easy to balance the need
> for more journals and the need to invest in patients. When we tried to get
> online access, we went through some of these problems.
>
> I also find that the BMJ group has been very good at helping users. I wish
> other publishers would have a second-look at some of their restrictive
> practices.
>
> 1. The majority charge more for the third-world, even allowing for
> postage. So much for their agreement with the WHO.
> http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/323/7304/0
>
> 2. One journal says online access is not available to Institutional
> subscribers but only to their society members.
>
> 3. Some publishers are not open about their licensing costs and policies
> and say everything is negotiable.
>
> 4. When the WHO signed an agreement regarding online access for the third
> world, again BMJ Publishing led the way. All the others have made their
> own interpretations of the agreement. Basically it meant that as India and
> Pakistan are major subscribers to journals they have been excluded.
> http://www.worldbank.org/data/databytopic/class.htm#Low_income
>
> 5. With Institution subscriptions some do not provide even IP based
> access, and one has to give out the passwords to everyone, as it is a
> waste to prevent those who have computers from using the access at their
> convenience.
>
> 6. Some will deliver in India only through a vendor. The journal is listed
> as subscribed by the vendor, who will not release the subscription number,
> and the publisher will ask us to contact the vendor.
>
> I guess we have to back the free journal movement to get publishers to
> fall in line with the times, at least to improve the service to the paying
> customers. The tobacco companies did not do anything till they were forced
> to. http://www.publiclibraryofscience.org/
>
>
> Ninan
> ************************************************
> Dr Ninan Chacko MS, MCh, FRCS (Urol)
> Prof of Urology
> Convenor Computer Committee
> Christian Medical College & Hospital
> Vellore, 632004, Tamil Nadu, India
> ************************************************