Re: University of Maryland's Open Access Deliberations

[Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>]

More accurate to say that "product sampling increases sales." 
It does in some instances, but the samples must be controlled or 
they will undermine sales.  Finding the right balance is an art. 
A related point is that the economic environment changes over 
time.  Thus what is a useful instance of product sampling today 
may be detrimental to product sales a year or more from now.

Joe Esposito

On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 4:07 PM, Klaus Graf 
<klausgraf@googlemail.com> wrote:

> There is enough evidence that OA increases sales:
> http://delicious.com/Klausgraf/monograph_open_access
>
> Klaus Graf
>
> 2009/5/1 Sandy Thatcher <sgt3@psu.edu>:
>
>> How does one even begin to measure the "economic value" of OA 
>> for, say, a work of literary criticism or a monograph on 
>> Hume's philosophy? We scholarly publishers would dearly like 
>> to believe that spreading our specialized content freely 
>> worldwide would be a benefit to civilization, but this is an 
>> article of faith for us, not something we have any easy way of 
>> quantifying economically.