Re: Suber's refutation of universities paying more for OA

[Matthew Cockerill <matt@biomedcentral.com>]

Peter, How exactly would subscription-based scientific journals 
"serv[e] readers long term, absent the support of government or 
funding agencies"?

Governments and funding agencies (not publishers) pay for the 
research to be done in the first place, without which there would 
be nothing for the journals to publish. And they also pay 
(invisibly) for the peer reviewers' time and often much of the 
editors' time, for pretty much all journals, not just open access 
journals.

For publishers to be paid (by the government and funding agencies 
amongst others) to provide a publication service is logically 
consistent, and seems eminently more sensible than for publishers 
not to be paid, but instead to be granted exclusive control of 
the articles which form the fundamental, hard won record of 
scientific discovery.

Matt

==
Matt Cockerill
Publisher
BioMed Central (http://www.biomedcentral.com)
34-42, Cleveland Street
London W1T 4LB

Email: matt@biomedcentral.com


On 5 Jun 2006, at 23:03, Peter Banks wrote:
[...]

> The large OA publishers have so far not shown that, now or in 
> the future, they are capable of serving readers long term, 
> absent the support of government or funding agencies.
[...]