RE: Who isn't being heard in the Open Access debate?

[Jan Velterop <velterop@biomedcentral.com>]

Chuck,

With regard to industrial vs. academic downloads to BMC material I refer
to my posting of May 4th 2004.

Might the figures you are bringing to our attention now infer that in an
Open Access environment, Academia rather than industry could actually be
the 'freeloaders'?

Jan Velterop

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Hamaker, Chuck [mailto:cahamake@email.uncc.edu]
> Sent: 10 May 2004 03:56
> To: 'liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu'
> Subject: Who isn't being heard in the Open Access debate?
> 
> Bob Houbeck, back in 1992 reminded the Oklahoma Conference that MOST
> research in the U.S. is NOT done by academics.
> 
> I checked the NSF reports, and in the year 2000, the most recent year 
> of data I could find, academic institutions performed 43% of all basic 
> research.
> 
> The majority of basic research is NOT being done in academic 
> institutions. Is that true for the UK as well? In talking primarily to 
> academics and academic publishers (whose primary market in many cases 
> is academic institutions) at least in the US the majority producers of 
> basic research are not being as actively included in this discussion.
> 
> Can BMC or PLOS tell what percentage of their downloads are 
> coming outside of academe? Is there a comprehensive register somewhere 
> of IP ranges for academic institutions that could provide a way of 
> getting ballpark on this question? If the majority of basic research is 
> outside the academy, and the majority of STM journal sales are inside 
> the academy there is a larger issue at stake than university and college 
> library budgets in this debate.
>
> It's possible this has been discussed (I realize there have 
> been postings about percent of sales to non-academic institutions).
> 
> And I might have missed this being raised in earlier posts.
> 
> Chuck Hamaker 
> UNC Charlotte