Friends,
Sean's got it exactly right. Half a decade back, the debate seemed to be
whether we could accept these other models. Today, the debate seems to be
whether the for-pay publishers will survive in the new era of open access
publishing. The emergence of serious OA journals and publishers is
accelerating, and for-pay publishers must accomodate them by adding value
and allowing for different kinds of exchange that were unthinkable only a
few years back.
It's been a while since I studied the figures, but the worldwide academic
publishing industry is a multi-billion dollar indutry. What is astonishing
is that universities and research organizations pay us to do the research
and writing. Then they pay us to do the reviewing and editing. After this
investment, we transfer our copyright to publishers who sell back to us at
high cost the content we pay for, create, and give them.
Most institutions are thinking this through carefully. These economics made
sense in the era of lead type, print on paper, and mailed subscriptions. We
paid for the services that publishers provided when printing presses were
dear and publishing was a costly process followed by the difficulties of
distribution. For any number of reasons, nearly everyone is thinking twice.
There have been rich discussions among librarians, university heads,
university presses, and others on these topics -- along with discussions by
scholars in every field. The change is nearly upon us. I'd suspect that
everyone is ready for it. It's more a matter of ironing out details than
principles.
In my faculty, what counts is the quality of the journal, not whether it
appears on paper. The publisher matters to some degree, but good new OA
publishers are far better respected than low-quality paper mills.
Best regards,
Ken
On Wed, 7 May 2008 08:54:52 +1000, Sean Cubitt <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>I'm just writing part of a faculty briefing for our university's information
>futures policy and tracking some of the developments here. OHP is a
>tremendous leap - and with both vectors and Fibreculture squarely in the
>CRUMB field. The idea of a double layer of quality assurance shd mean we can
>persuade both colleagues and research councils etc to recognise online
>journals as major sites equivalent to the hardcopy journals. A/c an EC
>report, Science technology medecine publishing is worth between 7 and 11 bn
>USD and prices have been rising at between 200 and 300 per cent of inflation
Ken Friedman
Professor, Ph.D., Dr.Sci. (hc), FDRS
Dean, Swinburne Design
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne, Australia
+61 3 92.14.64.49 Telephone Swinburne
+61 404 830 462 Mobile
email: [log in to unmask]
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