I would wholeheartedly agree with the notion that neither individual reader
nor individual author is burdenend with the cost of science communication.
Institutions bearing these costs is an obvious way forward, but better still
would be to regard the cost of publication as an intrinsic element of doing
the research and see it as just one of the costs to be covered by research
grants. For publicly funded research (the majority) this also has the
benefit of a direct and transparent link between the public source of the
money and the public accessibility of the results.
With regard to opening up access to science done in developing countries, I
would like to draw this list's attention to the fantastic work that's being
done by Scielo: www.scielo.org
Jan Velterop
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ept [mailto:ept_at_BIOSTRAT.DEMON.CO.UK]
> Sent: 14 January 2003 15:44
> To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
> Subject: Re: Nature's vs. Science's Embargo Policy
<snip>
> My understanding has always been that the open access
> movement aimed to
> provide free access to institutional archives - free of costs both to
> the author and the reader. Any costs to be met would be borne by
> institutions, which have an interest in distributing their
> own research
> output in ways that make the greatest impact. Again, my
> understanding is
> that costs for setting up an institutional eprint server would be:
> an initial modest setting-up cost, some hand-holding costs for authors
> in preparing documents for the eprints servers, followed by low
> maintainenance costs. These could surely be 'absorbed' by most
> organisations. Essential peer review costs would be readily
> paid for by
> savings plus automation.
>
> And that sounds just fine for science in the developing world.
>
> Barbara Kirsop
> Electronic Publishing Trust for Development - www.epublishingtrust.org
>
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Received on Thu Jan 16 2003 - 12:30:59 GMT