RE: Publishers' view/reply to David Prosser

["David Goodman" <David.Goodman@liu.edu>]

Even more to the point is that this is all a second-order problem. Once we
are resolved to distribute the literature without direct cost to the user,
and have devised the mechanisms for doing this, we are surely clever
enough to redistribute the funding.  With respect to the UK and other
countries where the funding for science research, teaching, and education
is relatively centralized, this should be a particularly easy job. In
countries like the US, where the sources of support are much more diverse,
it will require more political ingenuity.

There are two equally viable methods for distributing the literature, one
of relatively high cost, which is author paid funding of new and existing
journals, and the much more inexpensive system represented by ArXiv, and
Harnad's proposals.  I ask those who doubt the financial viability of the
author-paid route to consider the most likely practical alternative, which
would essentially replace instead of modify the present journal system.  
Personally, I think there is a good chance the necessary adjustments can
be made to retain the auxiliary benefits of present-day journals. But if
not, I think most working scientists would be prepared to accepy an
ArXiv-like solution, even if not as a first choice.

Dr. David Goodman
Associate Professor
Palmer School of Library and Information Science
Long Island University
dgoodman@liu.edu

-----Original Message-----
From:	Hamaker, Chuck [mailto:cahamake@email.uncc.edu]
Sent:	Wed 3/3/2004 11:28 PM
To:	'Anthony Watkinson '; 'liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu '
Subject: RE: Publishers' view/reply to David Prosser

Anthony:  Can you tell us what the calculation you mention below comes
from? citation etc?

I don't know an area the UK produces a majority of STM scholarship in,
though there may well be several, It is the minority of scholarship in
most STM areas, and it seems to me that Open Access would mean MORE access
for UK users, i.e. UK libraries by many accounts have relatively small
title lists. I don't know what that means in terms of adequacy, and I
don't know if that has been assessed.

I seem to remember an article in the 1980's that suggested as access to
chemistry journals went down in some UK institutions, output from
researchers went up-oh well..research in this area as you know is an
interesting mix of helpful and not...

What would it cost to improve access to existing literatures in the UK?

Do UK institutions routinely provide access to most of what researchers
need? Has anyone asked the researchers if they get sufficient access to
the world's literatures today? In other words, the question I asked almost
ten years ago -what do you need to do your job ?-is the bottom line,-- not
current library acquisitions or access-- for supporting research. If a
report calls the UK a "net exporter" of STM perhaps that is because the
needs or researchers have not been assessed rather than because the UK
buys access to less STM literatures than it exports?

Chuck Hamaker