Steve Hitchcock wrote:
> At 12:23 PM 7/14/97 +1000, Tony Barry wrote:
> >The payment regime is still a mess. I suspect as digital cash
> schemes take
> >off the publishers preferred solution will be direct end user access
> to
> >their services at an article level delivery, relying on volume sales
> rather
> >than few high cost subscription sales to libraries which presently
> supports
> >most academic publishers particularly in STM.
>
> This may be the case, but I would be interested to see the evidence.
> National site licences and, in the US, state-wide site licences, seem
> to be
> moving in the opposite direction. Ultimately this is not a technology
> or a
> payment issue, but an economic one, i.e what is the least riskiest way
> to
> generate the highest profit. Direct user access and payment is a more
> market-oriented solution than institutional subscriptions - not many
> publishers would prefer that!
>
> Steve Hitchcock
> Open Journal Project
> Multimedia Research Group, Department of Electronics and Computer
> Science
> University of Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK
> Email: [log in to unmask]
> Tel: +44 (01)703 594479 Fax: +44 (01)703 592865
> *****************************************************
> Open Journal Project Web page http://journals.ecs.soton.ac.uk/
> "Bringing journals alive on the World Wide Web"
> *****************************************************
A hybrid solution seems reasonable and likely. I agree the issue is
economic. Advance payments (subscriptions/site licences) suit both
cash-limited public sector purchasers and private-sector vendors, but
not every institution will have a site licence to every publication.
When they don't, then transactional payment comes into play: which could
be using micropayments, or a voucher system like the BLDSC's, or
something like CLA's CLARCS system seamlessly integrated into the supply
mechanism.
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