I agree about the problem with pricing- it is not the principal I have
problems with, but the amount. As has been pointed out the amount asked for is
not comparable with the subscription fees for 'academic' societies which
provide not only a journal, but newsletters and usually cheap admission to the
societies conference and discount on society publications. As most
professional tend to be specialists by need if not inclination, an eclectic
and diverse journal such as IA will suffer with such a stringent charging
policy. Obviously students get free access via university libraries, but in my
experience access to machines in libraries can be inconvenient, and difficult
to organise, and many students (including myself before I graduated) used to
acceess IA via their own computers at home. This problem may be aggravated
with the rise in numbers of part time/mature students when a flexible approach
to academic material is crucial.
I am sure that most chraging options have been explored, and obviously the
bottom line will be the need to cover staffing and production cost. It would
be nice, however, to see a more flexible approach to charging. Currently the
structure of the journal, divided up into 'Issues' seems cumbersome to me,
especially as the articles in each issue seem to go on-line over a period of
time. Would it not be possible to charge by the article rather than by the
'issue' - this means one would pay for what one accesses and not by what one
doesn't. This aproach is being used by some other providers of on-line access
to journals such as Ingenta- offering a kind of pay-per-view approach. Surely
if internet publications are going to challenge traditional appraoches to
publication there is a need to introduce innovative charging techniques as
well as publication techniques
cheers
david
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