One subversion too far?
http://www.text-e.org/debats/ Chris Armstrong
Stevan Harnad: "The anomaly, in my view, is that journals are charging
readers and their institutions anything at all for access to the
author's give-away work. so as to maximize the uptake and hence the
impact of the research, there is no longer any need or justification to
hold the online refereed research reports themselves hostage to those
add-ons and their access tolls."
I agree that there is no justification for charging an author to read
his or her own work or to distribute copies of that work to his or her
students, BUT I cannot see the logic behind extending this argument to
offering the work freely to all the author's colleagues or competitors.
Freedom of information and maximizing the impact of research
notwithstanding, there has to be some market value in the product.
(Obviously, or journals would not sell!) Shouldn't we rather be calling
for journal publishers to pay authors? Perhaps text-e should offer a
prize to the first journal publisher to come up with an imaginative
author package?
Also, isn't the mechanism already in place for journals to collect fees
for photocopied articles, let a percentage of this too be passed onto
the author.
By the way, what am I being paid for all these contributions???
Chris Armstrong, lundi 19 novembre 17:51 (heure de Paris)
http://www.text-e.org/debats/
Received on Thu Nov 22 2001 - 04:41:53 GMT