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RE: Interlibrary loan and elect
Steve Heller brings up a point that I have a concern about, the replacement of subscription economic models by an article level supply and demand economic model. If this becomes the direction for more commercial oriented documents, the STM esoteric field would not benefit from this model. Heller raises the $1000 article, which could well happen. If that is the case, would the field develop, and publish the articles which, at the moment, do not appear to have economic value, but later on would be the thought provoker for something significant? As more and more public funding is replaced by private funding for research, will this affect an undesirable outcome of when, and what will be published? As we move from a print distribution system to an electronic distribution system, we must remember that the history and orientation of the delivery medium is transactional based, used to packaging, distributing, and accounting for items on a transactional basis. Perhaps we need to step back and look at the entire process, from funding of research to delivery of its results, to see what the appropriate paradigms should be. One help in determining that would be to get a better base of information. One cannot get an accumulative perspective of the volumn of ILL that happens on an annual basis. One is forced to put together many bits and pieces. One cannot find any analyses on user behavior in relation to the use of computerized systems to search, identify, request, and obtain documents that fulfill a requirement. There are several tests going on at institutions that are replacing subscriptions with document delivery. More published results of these experiments would be of help. In sum, there are many players with high stakes in this scenario. It may be painful to some, but gethering a more cohesive base of data, in key areas, would certainly help a lot. Dennis Auld Director, PsycINFO American Psychological Association 750 First St. NE Washington, DC, 20002 Phone: 202-336-5636 Fax: 202-336-5633 E-mail: dba.apa@email.apa.org *********Forwarded Message Follows As i see it, right now publishers survive by selling subscriptions for everything that gets into their journals. All of it may (should) be of scholarly quality, but most of it is read only only by the author(s), reviwers, and copy editor. So you are really buying dozens or hundreds of articles for the 1-2 you really want. For a good journal in science this comes to $500 + per useful article. Go to a fee for each article makes sense in some ways, but when publsiher xyz decides to charge $1000 for each each article (knowing they will sell very few), what will people do? Publishers have a certain overhead and try (or do) make a profit. Divide the number of subscriptions by their desired income and you get the price of a current journal. Divide the number by a few articles and you get a higher number. Of course, if this was the real world, there would be downsizing and cost cutting so that there was not the need for a high level of income to produce the same profit. But we are dealing with 5 year olds who want their way, don't listen, and know everything (i.e, scholars who feel they need to publish in a high price journal or perish). One of these days someone will have to tell them to grow up before they bankrupt the libraies of this world. Steve Heller, USDA, ARS, Plant Genome Project Bldg. 005, Room 337 Beltsville, MD 20705-2350 USA Phone: 301-504-6055 FAX: 301-504-6231 E-mail: srheller@gig.usda.gov WWW: www.hellers.com/~steve
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