Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 15:41:29 +0100
From: Fytton Rowland <J.F.Rowland_at_lboro.ac.uk>
To: lis-elib_at_mailbase.ac.uk
As a member of the advisory committee on the ALPSP project, but
nevertheless having my own opinions about scholarly publishing matters,
I have some sympathy with the views Professor Harnad puts forward. The
ALPSP survey contains a lot of very useful data on the reactions of a
large sample of authors (over 3000 responses were obtained) to a number
of electronic-publishing questions. But it was, when all is said and
done, carried out by a group of publishers, albeit not-for-profit ones,
and was funded by them for their own benefit. So it was to be expected
that it would look primarily at a model of scholarly publishing that is
a modification of, not a revolutionary change from, the conventional
model from the past.
In fairness, though, it must be said that the ALPSP meeting that
launched their report, held in London on 9 April, did also present
papers on other models. I was specifically asked by ALPSP to address
the topic of "Non-Commercial Alternatives", and in my paper I reviewed
a number of these, including, needless to say, Professor Harnad's
ideas. The papers from that meeting will appear in the July 1999 issue
of ALPSP's own journal, Learned Publishing.
**********************************************************
Fytton Rowland, Director of Undergraduate Programmes,
Department of Information Science,
Loughborough University,
Loughborough, Leics LE11 3TU, UK.
Phone +44 (0) 1509 223039 Fax +44 (0) 1509 223053
E-mail: J.F.Rowland_at_lboro.ac.uk
http://info.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ls/staff/frowland.html
**********************************************************
Received on Wed Feb 10 1999 - 19:17:43 GMT