----- Original Message -----
From: "Stevan Harnad" <harnad_at_coglit.ecs.soton.ac.uk>
To: <AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG>
Sent: Monday, July 10, 2000 4:32 PM
Subject: WHO WILL PAY FOR WHAT?
> On Mon, 10 Jul 2000, Marvin wrote:
>
> > Max Frankel..NY Times Magazine (Sunday, July 9):
> >
> > "when will you get The Nirvana News?... not until the Web
> > worshipers quit their rhapsodizing about "free" digital news and
> > figure out a way to pay for its production. The Web has not
> > produced very good reporter robots or electronic editors. Nor has
> > it figured out how to pay the costly humans needed to gather,
> > interpret, write and package information in the coming world."
> >
> > Frankel wrote about newspapers, but most of his column is equally
> > applicable for scholarly publications.
>
> How is it applicable, Marvin? It is researchers who gather, interpret,
> write and package their research reports. The only thing they cannot do
> for themselves is the Quality-Control and its Certification (QCC).
>
These cost money to do well, do they not? And I wsn't only talking about
who gets payed for what. There is more than that to the column, and I said
where anyone can read the whole column - for free.
> > Most newspapers pay their writers, scholarly journals don't. Both have
> > costs beyond paying (or not paying) for manuscripts.
>
> If authors self-archive their final refereed drafts, and the distributed
> institutional Open Archives house them in perpetuo, what exactly are
> those further costs, other than QCC?
>
If there is only self-archiving in who knows how many sites, there will be
chaos.
> > Keeping in mind "he who pays the piper calls the tune", we need some
> > realistic discussion on who will pay for free-to-the-reader scholarly
> > publication. I didn't hear it at the meeting, and I haven't seen much
> > on this forum.
>
> And here I was, thinking that maybe I was repeating the formula too
> often: Have you seen much of this formula? SLP - 70%(SLP) = QCC
>
> Stevan Harnad
I've seen many things said that I think are simplistic. I've been in charge
of the expenses of one journal recently. Have you? Anyone can invent
numbers.
Received on Mon Jan 24 2000 - 19:17:43 GMT