Re: Cost of Open Access Journals: Other Observations

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

The statement below has been made many times over many years, but it
doesn't make it true.

There are a variety of categories of users of the scholarly literature who
are not authors (in some cases, not authors yet; in other cases, never
authors):

(1) Students at all levels
(2) High school and community college (in UK parlance, Secondary and Further
    Education) teachers
(3) Importantly, practitioners who need high-level technical college but do
    not undertake research: physicians, lawyers, consulting engineers,
    architects,....
(4) And yes, research scientists working in for-profit companies where
    publication in the open literature is discouraged.

No doubt others can think of more categories.

I am not in disgreement with Jean-Claude on the desirability of OA, but
let us base our arguments on facts.

Fytton Rowland, Louighborough University, UK.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "jcg" <jean.claude.guedon@umontreal.ca>
Sent: Monday, May 31, 2004 6:12 AM
Subject: Re: Cost of Open Access Journals: Other Observations

<snip>

"Besides, the set of present end users, i.e. scientists, is essentially the
same as the set of the producers."

<snip>