RE: Payment at input and introducing competition (was: PLoS pricing)

[Phil Davis <pmd8@cornell.edu>]

Chuck correctly identifies the central fallacy in Jan Veltrop's argument:  
increases in library budgets have not kept pace with increases in R&D
spending; therefore, the crisis in serial expenditures is a crisis in the
academy, and libraries should fight harder for additional funds.  (This is
a common theme that runs through Michael Mabe's articles and
presentations).

Unfortunately, this argument is an example of the "Naturalistic Fallacy".  
David Hume, an English philosopher summed it up by stating that you cannot
derive an "ought" from an "is", in other words, statements of morality
cannot be derived from statements of fact.

A similar fallacy could be made with US drug pricing, which has far
exceeded the growth of state, federal, health insurance, and other health
budgets.  By using the same fallacy, we could simply argue that we all
need to be paying more for our prescription drugs.  Canadians spend about
a third of the cost for the same drugs -- evidence that the argument that
pharmaceutical companies need to be paid more may not be justified.  In
the same vein, Chuck Hamaker states that increases in journal prices by
certain publishers saw exorbitant increases over the last 20 years.  A
retired publisher and respected consultant stated at the Oxford retreat
this past July, that there was a publisher's "feeding frenzy" during the
90's -- one was stupid not to increase prices, because everyone was doing
it.  Established commercial publishing houses have continued to post
double-digit profits even at a time of library budget retrenchment.  I
think this is sufficient evidence to refute the argument that the crisis
would subside if only libraries were given more money!

Jan Veltrop's passionate position for Open Access publishing is clearly
evident by his overly-frequent postings to liblicense-l.  By making
fallacious arguments, I'm afraid that he diminishes the strength of his
position.

--Phil Davis

At 11:46 AM 8/15/2003 -0400, you wrote:
> Yes, it is true, as Henderson asserts, that overall library budgets have
> NOT increased with increased R&D levels. But that argument is not relevant
> to the next piece of the argument, i.e. libraries should go get more money
> to be able to pay more for serials. The two don't connect directly.