Simon's contribution is both timely and thought-provoking, though it
takes the electronic publishing debate off in a different direction.
One of the attractions of electronic publishing, of course, is that it
offers a low-cost alternative to the increasingly outrageous cost of
journal subscriptions.  Is it really that unrealistic to argue that
information for the collection of which the public has paid should be
made available at minimal cost?  Personally, I take exception to the
charges which the Ordnance Survey make in the UK for the hire of digital
map data.  Public money paid for the accumulation of the data in the
first place.  Does this happen in other countries as well?

Terry O'Connor


Simon Davis wrote:
>
> This article has just appeared in the Guardian Weekly and thought it might
> be of some relevance:
>
> Scientists to boycott publishers
>
> James Meek
>
> Scientists around the world are in revolt against moves by a powerful group
> of private corporations to lock decades of publicly funded Western
> scientific research into expensive, subscription-only electronic databases.
> More than 22,000 researchers from 161 countries have joined in a campaign to
> boycott publishers of scientific journals who refuse to make research papers
> freely available on the internet after six months.
> "Science depends on knowledge and technology being in the public domain,"
> said Michael Ashburner, professor of biology at Cambridge University and one
> of the leading British signatories of the campaign, the Public Library of
> Science (PLS). "In that sense, science belongs to the people, and the fruits
> of science shouldn't be owned or even transferred by publishers for huge
> profits. The fruits of our research - which is, overwhelmingly, publicly
> paid for - should be made available as widely and as economically as
> possible."
> Anger has been simmering for more than a decade in the research libraries of
> Europe and the United States at the massive increase in the cost of
> subscriptions to scientific journals, which collectively make up the sum of
> the world's scientific research.
> As the power of the internet to mine electronically archived journals for
> data grows, scientists have become increasingly frustrated at publishers'
> plans to keep lucrative control over decades of their work. Last year the
> most powerful journal publisher, the Anglo-Dutch firm Reed Elsevier, made a
> profit of $357.6m on a turnover of $983.6m in its science and medical
> business.
> Elsevier Science and other journal publishers effectively benefit from the
> public purse twice: once when taxpayer-funded scientists submit their work
> to the journals for free, and again when taxpayer-funded libraries buy the
> information back from them in the form of subscriptions.
> Derk Haank, the head of Elsevier Science, protested at the singling out of
> his company, and portrayed the boycott group as naive idealists. "Everybody
> would like to have everything available, all the time, and preferably for
> free," he said. "That's a general human trait, but I'm not sure the business
> model is realistic. I'm not ashamed to make a profit. I would only be
> ashamed if people were saying that I was delivering a lousy service."
>
> The Guardian Weekly 31st May 2001-