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Dear Jan,
Indeed, you have missed something.
After our long discussion, Stevan and I, support was defined as follows:
1. Direct transfer of funds to a journal through some governmental or
para-governmental body (e.g. a Council, a publicly supported university,
etc.)in the form of direct subsidies (e.g. the 140+ journals directly
supported by the Social Science and Humanities Research council of
Canada);
2 Indirect support, i.e. free access to space, equipment and work time
within a publicly supported institution (King and Tenopir mention this
as hidden form of publishing support and some publishers have even
deemed it "unfair" competition...
Stevan raised the very point you mentioned in yet another attempt brush
aside as marginal or irrelevant the possibility of mandating certain
categories of publicly-supported journals to OA. I have made it clear in
my response that I keep the form of "support" you mention out of the
discussion: it really relates to the seller-customer relationship. I
would also include in this non-public support the direct transfer of
publishing fees (instead of a subscription fee) - e.g. the $3,000 fee
practised your new employer.
My point was *not* to try showing that commercial journals are publicly
supported; my point was to demonstrate that, in many countries, a (often
overwhelming) majority of journals are supported by public subsidies,
either directly or indirectly. Because of this, I argue they can be
mandated by governments to go OA. Incidentally, Stevan agreed with this
proposition (while still maintaining that it touched only a small number
of largely irrelevant or inferior journals).
Le samedi 17 septembre 2005 à 18:17 +0100, Jan Velterop a écrit :
> I've clearly missed something. Whence this discussion? Is there a
> problem? One could easily make the case that *all* scholarly journals
> are supported by public money. If not directly, then certainly
> indirectly, as all journals get a substantial part of their revenues
> (often the majority) from publicly funded institutions, who pay for
> the subscriptions, licences, page charges, reprints, and the like.
>
> That's true for many industries, though. Think of road construction,
> and, dare I say it, arms manufacturing.
>
> Jan Velterop
>
> On 17 Sep 2005, at 15:20, Jean-Claude Guédon wrote:
>
> > A member of the library of the Academy of science of China has
> > responded
> > to my query about public support of journals in her country. here is
> > what she had to say:
> >
> > As far as we know, all the scholarly journals in China may more or
> > less
> > receive public support. Editorial office of the scholarly journals are
> > always affiliated to a certain institute, school or society, which
> > makes
> > them more credible to readers. The institute, school or society would
> > devote part of their budget supporting the journals. Nowadays more and
> > more journals are turning to self-financing, but they still receive
> > public support in the form of space, equipment or work-time of
> > employees.
> >
> > Consequently, the case of China appears clear: all or nearly all
> > scholarly publications in China receive some form of public support.
> >
> > In all three cases thus far surveyed - Canada, Chile, China - we
> > find a
> > majority of journals supported by public money. From Chile, we hear
> > that
> > the Chilean situation is replicated across the whole continent.
> >
> > If this is a marginal phenomenon, we must redefine the word
> > "marginal"...
> >
> > jcg
> >
> >
> > --
> > Dr. Jean-Claude Guédon
> > Dept. of Comparative Literature
> > University of Montreal
> > PO Box 6128, Downtown Branch
> > Montreal, QC H3C 3J7
> > Canada
> >
--
Dr. Jean-Claude Guédon
Dept. of Comparative Literature
University of Montreal
PO Box 6128, Downtown Branch
Montreal, QC H3C 3J7
Canada
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Received on Sat Sep 17 2005 - 21:09:19 BST