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RE: NYT on Cornyn-Lieberman
- To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
- Subject: RE: NYT on Cornyn-Lieberman
- From: JOHANNES VELTEROP <velteropvonleyden@btinternet.com>
- Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 20:02:29 EDT
- Reply-to: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
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Lisa is right, authors can just publish their papers on some blog or other web site, thus making sure that it is publicly available for free, and they need not bother a publisher. However, there is great value in 'formalising' scientific and scholarly literature. That 'formalising' is, in short, what journals and their publishers contribute. Instead of stopping to accept articles funded by governments and other funders who require open access, as Lisa suggests (not seriously, I think, but in exasperation), it would be better if publishers were simply paid for their services to do this work of 'formalising' the literature. The Wellcome Trust has formulated it as follows: Publishing is integral to doing research, and therefore the cost of publishing is integral to the cost of doing research. They mean, I think, 'formal' publishing. And they put their money where their mouth is. Of course, there are still practical hurdles to overcome, but the acknowledgement on the one hand that open access is good and on the other that formal publishing is no sinecure, is part of research and costs money, would be a good start to finding ways to surmount whatever practical hurdles there are. Jan Velterop _____________________ Lisa Dittrich <lrdittrich@aamc.org> wrote: If the research should be free to all, then simply make it available, sans review, editing, etc., to the public on some publicly available Web site. THAT is the solution. What we "publishing hacks"--or, correction, this particular hack--objects to is having to give away work to which I and my staff have SUBSTANTIVELY contributed. In essence, it no longer belongs solely to the researcher or his/her funder, and no one, including the public, has paid any of the costs of what I and my staff have contributed. I am not being greedy--our journal is not a profit maker. I simply want our work to be appropriately compensated (not to mention simply ACKNOWLEDGED--this proposed legislation, and its many proponents, act as if publishers add no value at all, or at least nothing that cannot be recouped in six months time). The journal's staff, a fine group of people who require reasonable salaries, health care, etc., work hard to ensure that mss. are properly tracked, reviewed, and substantively edited (which means ensuring that authors' mistakes, bad writing, etc., are corrected). Our authors pay us no fees. Our subscription prices are low. You could argue that we should cut most of our staff and do none of these things. Fine. Then you are back to my plan of simply posting results on a Web site. Authors can't have it both ways. Either you want what publishers offer--for which you must compensate us--or you don't. I actually hope that an opposite push comes, and journals stop accepting mss. from government funded authors (a dream, I know). Let Varmus's original plan be put in place, and let's have a non-vetted Web site of research results, free to all. This seems really to be the goal. I personally have no problem with it--let's just be honest about our intentions and real about the consequences of whatever approach we choose! Lisa Dittrich Managing Editor Academic Medicine Washington, D.C. 20037 www.academicmedicine.org
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