The traditional solution here is a traditional library. Some things
librarians can't do as well as we would like, but we do know how to buy
books and lend them to people.
David Goodman
Research Librarian and
Biological Sciences Bibliographer
Princeton University Library
dgoodman_at_princeton.edu 609-258-7785
On Tue, 16 Jul 2002, Stevan Harnad wrote:
> On Tue, 16 Jul 2002, Thomas Krichel wrote:
>
> > > Not so simple.
> >
> > What do you mean? He does not give away, I do not read. Two
> > simple choices by two individuals. It has no bearing on the
> > general issues.
>
> Then why post it to this Forum, which is concerned with the general
> issues?
>
> The reason I stress this point is that I don't think it does the cause of
> open access any good at all to conflate it with the consumer's understandable
> preference not to pay for goods, even when their creator would prefer to
> be paid for them. Or the consumer's age-old prerogative not to purchase
> what he does not wish to pay for.
>
> That preference and that prerogative are as old as the hills, and have
> nothing to do with the radically new open-access possibilities opened
> up by the online medium, which pertain only to give-away goods: This
> includes all peer-reviewed articles (2 million a year, appearing in
> 20,000 journals), but it most definitely does not include all books.
>
> Presumably every creator who offers a product for sale knows that
> putting a price-tag on it will reduce usage: Most products are not
> concerned with maximizing usage but with maximizing sales revenue.
>
> The conflation of the objective of free access to give-away digital
> content with the notion that all digital content should be free is as
> unhelpful to the cause of open access as are the following:
>
> the conflation of creator give-away with consumer ripoffs (napster):
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0673.html
> http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#24.Napster
>
> the conflation of gate-keeping (peer review)
> with toll-gating (subscription/license tolls)
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1118.html
>
> the conflation of impact income (salaries,
> grants, prizes) with imprint income (toll-revenue)
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#1.2
>
> the conflation of concerns about "fair use"
> with concerns about maximizing research impact
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2006.html
>
> The most fundamental conflation of all, underlying all of this,
> is the conflation of the give-away and non-give-away literature
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2006.html
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#1
>
> Stevan Harnad
>
Received on Wed Jul 17 2002 - 04:04:14 BST