Re: Further precisions on the Finnish situation

From: Arthur Sale <ahjs_at_ozemail.com.au>
Date: Mon, 3 Oct 2005 08:30:28 +1100

Andrew

 

Sorry Andrew, you did misunderstand me. I&#8217;ll rephrase the
statement: &#8220;Putting aside the voluntary and free help that any
university or professional society anywhere in the world provides to the
scholarly publishing process, my conclusion is that in Finland there may
be no journals subsidized by public funds&#8221;.

 

Since the point of this discussion is supposedly to discover what direct
stakes national governments have in journal publishing, the sort of
example you give is not relevant. *However, if we regarded such instances
as 'subsidy', then this whole exercise is pointless.* Exactly 100% of all
scholarly journals in the world are subsidized.

 

What Jean-Claude is looking for is instances of cash subsidies from
public money - transfers of real money from a national government to
subsidize a journal. *And this is not the way to go about it, even if the
data were useful for something. The results are simply too liable to
misinterpretation.*

 

So in summary -

·         Your first example is simply the voluntary provision of time by
the Professor, though we could perhaps wonder about degree of freedom the
secretary has in freely giving his/her services. We all do this.
I&#8217;m doing it now.

·         The second involves no &#8216;public money&#8217; - some funds
contributed by members of the society go to support their journal. There
are many instances of similar arrangements.

 

Arthur

 

> -----Original Message-----

> From: American Scientist Open Access Forum
[mailto:AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-

> ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG] On Behalf Of Andrew A. Adams

> Sent: Sunday, 2 October 2005 23:55

> To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG

> Subject: Re: Further precisions on the Finnish situation

>

> > From:    Arthur Sale <ahjs_at_OZEMAIL.COM.AU>

> > My conclusion is that in Finland there may be no journals subsidized
by

> > public funds, any more than any university or professional society

> > anywhere

> > in the world provides unpaid help to the scholarly publishing
process.

>

> My interpretation of what you meant to say here may be at fault, but my

> reading of your statement here is that no university or scholarly
society

> subsidizes scholarly publishing. That is just patently untrue. I give
two

> counter examples to this claim (sorry if I misread your intent).

>

> A Professor in my department is the principal editor of the
International

> Computer Vision Journal. The time he spends on this is significant and
the

> journal does not pay for his time, nor that of the secretary who does a

> significant amount of purely administrative support for this. This is a

> subsidy that my University provides to the scholarly publishing
process. Now,

> it increases our prestige, but there is no direct financial return for
the

> University on this.

>

> The London Mathematical Society has a (currntly OA) journal, the
Journal of

> Computation and Mathematics which is both free to publish in and free
to

> access. The society pays the executive editor's salary and funds the
hosting.

>

>

> --

> *E-mail*a.a.adams_at_rdg.ac.uk********  Dr Andrew A Adams

> **snail*23 Ivydene Road************  School of Systems Engineering

> ***mail*Reading RG30 1HT, UK*******  The University of Reading

> ****Tel*+44-118-378-6997***********  Reading, United Kingdom
Received on Mon Oct 03 2005 - 05:31:01 BST