does any one know any evidence about the effect of providing full text on
the web , not as a down loadable ebook but as an html site, on paper sales
muir gray
www.resourcefulpatient.org
----- Original Message -----
From: "M. Meier" <meiermi_at_GMX.DE>
To: <AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG>
Sent: Friday, July 19, 2002 9:42 AM
Subject: Re: Book on future of STM publishers
> As many of you wonder about the "outdated" media in which the dissertation
> is published, I will give you the obvious explanation: The University of
> Munich requires that all Ph.D manuscripts have to be handed in in print
form, no
> online or CD-ROM version allowed. To recover the printing costs (appr. $
400),
> every Ph.D. candidate tries to find a decent enough publisher to get at
> least a small percentage back. My publisher, a newly founded PoD boutique,
would
> not be very happy if the book appeared as a free document on the www.
>
> Regards
>
> Michael Meier
>
>
>
>
> > This is an interesting point. In some disciplines, there is a tradition
> > of
> > writing journal articles based on one's PhD research -- some of them
> > perhaps
> > published before the thesis is written -- while in other fields the
> > practice is
> > to turn one's thesis into a book. However, the thesis itself, in its
> > original
> > form as an examination document, is usually made publicly available in
the
> > library of its home university, and is indexed in various secondary
> > services
> > such as Dissertation Abstracts. If universities in future mostly have
> > OAI-
> > compliant servers, and theses are submitted in electronic as well as
> > printed
> > form, there seems to be no obstacle to each university mounting its own
> > theses
> > on its server for free worldwide access.
> >
> > But... Stevan often makes the point that his concern is purely with the
> > scholarly journal literature, which is given away by its authors, and
> > which
> > should be avialable free of charge to other scholars. He goes on to say
> > that
> > this argument does not apply to other kinds of publication for which
> > authors
> > are traditionally paid, which is the case with books, even scholarly
> > books. On
> > that argument, having to pay 30 Euros for Meier's book is o.k.
> >
> > Hmm... So, if we are in a discipline that uses journals, free access is
> > o.k.;
> > free access to the raw thesis is also o.k.; but if the discipline is one
> > that
> > has the tradition of a book based on the thesis, then free access is not
> > o.k.
> > What do others think of this line of argument?
> >
> > Fytton.
> >
> > Fytton Rowland, Dept of Information Science, Loughborough University,
UK.
> >
> > Quoting Thomas Krichel <krichel_at_OPENLIB.ORG>:
> >
> > > M. Meier writes
> > >
> > > > An exposé is availabel under
http://www.ep.uni-muenchen.de/themen.htm.
> > > The
> > > > book as a whole will unfortunately not be available online for free.
> > >
> > > I understand that the book is Michael's PhD thesis. I think that
> > > it would be interesting to understand the reasons why it is not
> > > freely available online. If the FOS movement can not convince
scholars
> > > in scholarly communication to make their work freely available
online,
> > > we do have a problem. I would like to understand what the problem is
> > > here.
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > >
> > > Thomas Krichel
> > > mailto:krichel_at_openlib.org
> > >
> > > http://openlib.org/home/krichel
> > >
> > > RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
> > >
> > >
> >
>
> --
> GMX - Die Kommunikationsplattform im Internet.
> http://www.gmx.net
Received on Sat Jul 20 2002 - 15:50:26 BST