Re: Stop fighting the inevitable - and free funds for open access!

From: Imre Simon <imres.g_at_GMAIL.COM>
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2007 17:17:34 -0200

> The number of US taxpayers who have thought to themselves, > "Gee, I sure wish
> I could read the Journal of the National Cancer Institute," is
> vanishingly
> small. That includes taxpayers with cancer.

Mr. Banks,

It also includes american oncologists who do not have access neither
to JNCI nor to other important journals in their area. And still your
number probably continues to be a vanishingly small number of
taxpayers.

You seem to infer from this that the current practices and business
models of distributing research results are optimal or near optimal.
Maybe they are optimal for publishers.

I infer from this that if we could afford that every doctor who wishes
to be better informed could easily obtain the information whose
marginal cost of reproduction and dissemination is practically zero
then we would be in a much better world and that is why I fully
support OA.

If you have the numbers to prove me wrong, please go ahead and give
them. I confess that I do not have them. To help you I found out that
an annual personal subscription to JNCI costs about 450US$.

If you allow me I also include brazilian (and other) oncologists among
those who would benefit from OA. Even though they are not US taxpayers
I can guarantee you that many of them cannot afford spending about
4,000US$ annually to have access to the principal journals in their
speciality.

Yours,

Imre Simon
Professor of Computer Science, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil
Received on Wed Jan 31 2007 - 21:43:45 GMT