Re: Cost of Open Access Journals: Other Observations

[jcg <jean.claude.guedon@umontreal.ca>]

In the digital world, the marginal costs of adding all these other users
is minimal. So, why not? All the more so that it provides academic
institution with a way to create good relations with the public at large,
and industries as well.

Besides, the set of present end users, i.e. scientists, is essentially the
same as the set of the producers. So the ones who benefit from the
information are the ones who provide the information if you take a macro
view of the situation. So...

Perhaps, beginning to think out of the commercial box, and decreasing
one's sense of fetishism for everything being market bound would help a
little.

Jean-Claude Gu�don
 
On Fri May 28 2004 03:43 pm, D Anderson wrote:

> Other contributors to this list have a much deeper knowledge of the
> politics of academic budgets than I do, but I can't imagine that a
> research-oriented department would willingly accept the burden of paying
> for access by everyone else, including non-research-oriented educational
> institutions, commercial enterprises, and the general public.
>
> Economists would argue that the end users of the information, the ones who
> ultimately benefit from that information, should provide compensation
> commensurate with the benefits they receive.
>
> Dean H. Anderson