Re: PR's 'pit bull' takes on open access: excerpts from article in Nature Magazine

From: Subbiah Arunachalam <subbiah_a_at_YAHOO.COM>
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2007 16:49:20 +0000

I think it is time for people like John Willinsky and
D K Sahu to step in and tell Mr Banks and others who
think publishers need to spend a lot of money to run
the journals (getting papers refereed, pay for
correspondence, etc.) how to reduce these costs from
their actual experience.

Also, most developing countries invest in research
hoping it would benefit their people. How then can
scientists receiving taxpayers' money to do research
give away the copyright to the results they publish to
a journal publisher AND more importantly make it
difficult for his/her countrymen to gain access to the
results without paying a hefty subscription fee to the
publisher. The very same publishers CANNOT obtain
copyright to papers published by scientists employed
by the US Government (NASA, NIH, etc.). Why this
double standard?

I have heard of instances when publishers demanded a
fee from authors who wanted to reproduce a part of
their papers (figures, tables, for example) in a book
they wrote or to wanted to reproduce multiple copies
of the paper for distribution to their students.

In any case how can publishers justify the enormous
increase in journal subscription prices - several
times the general inflation rate?

Arun
[Subbiah Arunachalam]
Received on Mon Jan 29 2007 - 04:05:48 GMT