Re: Exchange in the Financial Times

[Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>]

Steve Hitchcock's question is a fair one.  To respond, I flipped through
my notes of the past week to see where electronic publishing came up in
meetings and phone conversations.  I did not retrace my email, newsgroups,
etc.

*One conversation concerned the launch of a new form of ebook device.  
The conversation centered on what it would take to get widespread adoption
of ebooks.  No reference to Open Access.

*Several conversations concerned text-to-speech synthesis technology
(TTS).  There is one view that TTS is what will make ebooks ubiquitous.  
Another discussion centered on the restrictions publishers now put on
ebooks such that they cannot be run through a TTS engine such as the one
that comes with Windows XP.  No reference to OA.

*I asked a publishing veteran for his list of the top three strategic
issues in electronic publishing.  Two of his responses were tactical, but
his primary point was the convergence of rights that electronic publishing
brings about (that is, it is harder to sell slices of copyrighted works).  
No reference to OA.

*A discussion concerning college texts focused on a plan to create
Web-based texts that would be marketed as services directly to students,
bypassing college bookstores (and putting an end to the used book market).  
No reference to OA.

*Several discussions of building institutional repositories for higher ed
and the corporate sector.  No reference to OA.

*A brief discussion of OA with a philanthropic organization.  OA was
dismissed as not being scalable.  The conversation moved on to other
things.

*A discussion of the creation of a software platform for academic
publishing that would enable sophisticated data-mining.  No reference to
OA.

*A discussion of supply-chain management for hardcopy books, in which the
data supporting the supply chain evolves into a dynamic, mineable
document.  No reference to OA.

*Various discussions with company buy-out groups about evaluating the use
of the Internet in pricing a deal.  No reference to OA.

There is more, but this list already grows tedious.  Except for one
discussion with the philanthropic group noted above, the only references
to OA came from the liblicense mail group and Web sites I continue to
monitor, and I spend my entire day, every day, in discussions about
electronic publishing, with representatives of all publishing sectors.  
Thus, I conclude that OA is at this time at most a marginal issue.  
Members of this list may point out that (for example) environmental
pollution was once a marginal issue and look at it now.  I would agree.

Joe Esposito


On Mon, 29 Nov 2004 19:45:34 EST, Steve Hitchcock <sh94r@ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:
> At 18:57 26/11/04 -0500, you wrote:
> 
> >Many readers of this list will already have seen this exchange on Open
> >Access in the Financial Times:
> >
> >http://news.ft.com/cms/s/1ea23b3e-3f15-11d9-8e70-00000e2511c8.html
> >
> >It is Tweedledum versus Tweedledee, and the winner is dum-dee-dum!
> >
> >Note the implication in the headline of the article and the texts of the
> >pieces that the ONLY form of innovation in electronic publishing concerns
> >Open Access.  OA is a very small part of what is going on in electronic
> >publishing today and is largely irrelevant to the investments currently
> >being made that will define the future shape of scholarly communications.
> 
> Joe, You might want to elaborate on this point, because I'm looking at it
> from an academic's perspective, as one who follows developments in
> electronic publishing, and Open Access is THE biggest factor currently. It
> has a profound effect on everything. As I see it, anyone who is making
> business decisions in this area and isn't taking OA into account, or is
> minimising the effect of OA, is making the wrong decisions. Here I'm
> including everyone in the academic publishing chain, from authors on.
> 
> Steve Hitchcock
> Email: sh94r@ecs.soton.ac.uk