Re: Do governments subsidize journals (was: Who gets hurt by Open

["Anthony Watkinson" <anthony.watkinson@btopenworld.com>]

It is odd that this argument (the argument from physics) is used again and
again. Most preprints in some areas of physics are self-archived. Most
postprints in all areas are not. Preprints are obviously not the same as
peer reviewed articles.

----- Original Message -----
From: <heatherm@eln.bc.ca>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Monday, September 19, 2005 11:35 PM
Subject: Re: Do governments subsidize journals (was: Who gets hurt by Open

> Sally -
>
> On what basis are you making this assumption?
>
> If you are implying that revenue contribution from the corporate sector
> will decrease in an open access environment - where is your proof?  The
> experience with physics journals in light of the strong self-archiving
> tradition in this discipline is that ongoing subscriptions can continue
> to flourish in a nearly 100% open access environment.
>
> If any sector is likely to keep up subscriptions to publishers'
> versions, with all the pretty formatting and other bells and whistles,
> is it not the corporate sector?  A researcher in a smaller institution
> with a small library budget, or a third world researcher, might be
> thrilled to be able to read the research - just as the author wrote it.  
> It's the corporate folks, wanting to present the research on which a
> business idea is built, who are most likely to want to pay for the
> cosmetics.  Plus, they are very likely to want any non-research material
> (who's doing what, etc.) - so why worry about losing subscriptions?
>
> If you're worried about advertising revenue - since when did advertisers
> object to reaching more people?  Advertising thrives in an open access
> environment - just look at google, traditional television broadcasting,
> and free newspapers.
>
> As for the percentage of revenue for STM publishers coming from the
> corporate sector, estimates from experts appear to vary widely - from
> Jan Velterop's less than 5% to Elsevier's (totally unsubstantiated, to
> my knowledge) 25%, to your "up to half".
>
> I discuss this topic in some detail on the SPARC Open Access Forum, out
> of respect for Liblicense readers who probably prefer to read about
> licensing issues, and the most closely related open access issues,
> rather than all the details on a topic such as this.  My latest SOAF
> message is at: https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/2346.html
>
> cheers,
>
> Heather Morrison
> http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com
>
> On Sun, 18 Sep 2005 12:10:25 EDT liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu wrote:
> > The point is that the balance will shift.  More of the cost will have to
> > be borne by the academic community (and thus, ultimately, the taxpayer)
> >
> > Sally Morris, Chief Executive
> > Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers
> > Email:  sally.morris@alpsp.org