Re: learned societies and open access

["Fytton Rowland" <J.F.Rowland@lboro.ac.uk>]

Jan Velterop wrote:

"Any societies that are in principle in favour of going the open access
route but find building the technological tools and platform daunting or
costly, are cordially invited to take up contact with us with a view to
sharing the tried and tested tools and platform of BioMed Central without
the need for any investment up-front."

I don't think this is the major problem for societies - after all,
HighWire, Ingenta, etc., have been giving e-publishing technological
assiatance to society publishers for years, and ALPSP is a mutual
self-help organisation.  The major problems are concerned with revenue,
which is used for support of a society's other non-publishing activities.  
There is also a more fundamental point, especially for small societies. If
their publications are available free of charge to all on the WWW, people
who used to belong to the society in order to receive personal copies of
(or more recently personal electronic access to) their journals may see no
reason to belong to the society at all, thus putting its very existence in
jeopardy.

Fytton Rowland, Loughborough University, UK.