Re: Correction (RE: Thatcher vs. Harnad)

[Paul Courant <pnc@umich.edu>]

The "good thing" is not barriers to authors per se, it is 
effective mechanisms to allow readers to avoid wasting their 
scarce time.  The publishing industry is often helpful, not so 
much via pricing and scarcity but via trusted editors, reviewers 
and imprints.  Almost everyone in the scholarly world also uses 
informal networks for the same purpose. If I want to find out 
what to read in an area that I do not know well, I make a few 
calls and send a few e-mails and usually have a very nice reading 
list by the end of the day.  Joe's parable of the Economist makes 
the point that time is scarce very well.  I agree that time is 
scarce, and I would argue that the   difficult issue is 
determining how to allocate our time across things that we have 
NOT already seen.  I'm not sure I want to trust scholarly 
publishers to make that choice for me via imposing barriers on 
authors, although I'm glad to accept their help, and the help of 
formal and informal communities of practice, as well as that of 
my neighborhood librarian, and Peter Brantley's listserv and 
blog, just to name a few.

On 6/28/07 10:29 PM, "Joseph Esposito" <espositoj@gmail.com> 
wrote:
> Barriers to authors are a good thing, not a bad thing.  While 
no
> one would want a system where only the rich can publish (which 
is
> not the case today) or only the rich can read (which is not the
> case today), I would think no one would want a system where any
> author (poster?) can lay equal claim on our attention.  The
> question is how to apportion attention.  The current dominant
> method, the user-pays publishing world, for all its flaws, does 
a
> good job in allocating attention. Its assumption is that people
> will measure the allocation of attention by the amount of money
> they choose to spend on objects of their attention.  Thus
> publishers compete to have the most attention-worthy products.
> You pay attention to what you pay for.
>
> I cancelled my subscription to The Economist not because I 
can't
> afford it but because I don't have the time to read it.  It
> competes with everything else I have to read, a list that
> continues to grow. The Economist is a very good publication, 
but
> not good enough, at least to me.  I stopped reading it when I
> began to subscribe to Peter Brantley's READ 2.0 mailgroup.  I 
had
> to choose, but not because of money.  Brantley could charge 
three
> times the price of The Economist and I would still subscribe.
>
> The image promulgated by some open access advocates is a world 
of
> researchers with time on their hands.  They have nothing to
> occupy themselves with since they can't get access to 
everything
> that is published, everything that has been published, and
> presumably anything that would be published if publishers 
weren't
> such nasty SOBs who like to say no.  What's better, a doubling 
of
> accessible materials or an added hour in the workday to review
> materials already available.?
>
> Joe Esposito
>
> On 6/28/07, David Prosser <david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk> 
wrote:
>>> >>Except to the degree that it raises barriers to publication 
for
>>> >>authors -- which, of course, it does.
>> >
>> > Except, of course, where there are no author fees (in the 
case of
>> > over half of the journals listed in the DOAJ), or where the
>> > authors fees can be waived (BMC, PLoS, etc.).
>> >
>> > (Incidentally, I always find it intriguing that open access
>> > publication fees are described as barriers to publication, 
but we
>> > rarely hear the same being said of page charges, colour 
figure
>> > charges, etc. for publication-based journals.)
>> >
>> > David C Prosser PhD
>> > Director
>> > SPARC Europe
>> > E-mail:  david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk
>
>



-----------------------------
Paul N. Courant
University Librarian and Dean of Libraries
Harold T. Shapiro Collegiate Professor
    of Public Policy
Professor of Economics and of Information
The University of Michigan
734-764-9356