Re: Electronic Publication and the Narrowing of Science and Scholarship

[Thomas Krichel <krichel@openlib.org>]

Joseph J. Esposito writes

> We have seen champions of low-cost technological solutions 
> argure their case on this list.  I don't think they will be 
> with us very long.

I think the total cost does not matter much. It matters more if 
the cost occurs centrally or not. Think of the total cost of 
running the web, probably enormous.

So "low cost" models will stay. One example is RePEc of course. 
The bulk of the cost is decentralized on RePEc archive 
maintainers, about 800 of them.

> The best strategy for any publisher, traditional or open 
> access, is deep *and ongoing* investments in technology 
> designed to increase the discoverability and usability (which 
> leads to further discoverability) of published materials.

Correct! But the publishing industry has not understood that.
Otherwise they would be making more metadata freely available.

Cheers,

Thomas Krichel                    http://openlib.org/home/krichel
                               RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
                                              skype: thomaskrichel