Barbara, Erik,

In many universities, the cost of journals represents 70-95% of the 
available library funding for many science subjects. Cancellations are 
often not an option they are a necessity. In such a climate librarians 
will cancel if they can to release money for other information needs.

Comparisons with earlier forms of parallel publishing are not valid 
because they were not the same articles that had passed the same quality 
tests.

In addition there are other pressures on the traditional journal. In some 
areas of technology researchers are telling me they have no need for 
refereed journals (as an information source) or the indexes thereof as 
they live in a world of tech reports, e-prints and other web publications 
all indexed by CiteSeer and Google Scholar.

I'm a firm believer in human refereeing but if the end-users believe they 
can locate quality informaton by automated citation analysis and personal 
recommendation (ie, web links) the traditional journal is being undermined 
from all angles (to mix my metaphors :-) ).

Regards,

John Smith.


  On Tue, 10 Oct 2006, EPT wrote:

> There are other examples showing that providing free content does not damage sales. In India and other developing countries, sales of a number of scientific journals have increased since converting to OA (as have submissions and impact). Likewise, the Guardian newspaper's sales have increased significantly in 2005 even though much of the content is now available free online. The music industry is flourishing in spite of free downloads. And we all know that the two major physics journals show no losses in spite of close collaboration with arXive. The trend goes against the gut instinct that some people have - if it's free somewhere, people won't buy the product. But it seems that the people that are going for the free content are those that can't afford to purchase it anyway, so it's an *additional* user group that is being brought in.
>
> In any case, publicly funded research information should be available free to everyone that needs it and, currently, many that need it can't afford it, and almost all of the poorest countries whose needs are greatest can afford it least.
>
> Barbara Kirsop
> Electronic Publishing Trust for Development
>  ----- Original Message -----
>  From: Erik Moore
>  To: [log in to unmask]
>  Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2006 2:55 PM
>  Subject: Re: Harnad model
>
>
>
>
>    this parasitism will ultimately destroy the current journal model (who is going subscribe to a journal when all its articles are available for free?).
>
>
>  This remains to be seen, and the same question has been asked of other models (technical reports, monographs) where free offerings have been beneficial, not parasitic. In the USA, the National Academies Press <http://www.nap.edu/> allows free online viewing of all content they publish (3000+ books); they have added download availability by chapter and whole work--some (hundreds) for a fee and some (hundreds) for free. Michael Jensen, Director of Publishing Technologies at that press, has made frequent mention that free offerings have helped, rather than hindered, their sales.
>
>  Daniel Cohen's and Roy Rosenzweig's book Digital History has been a top seller at U. Penn press, with sales apparently undiluted (and in fact, probably aided) by being freely available online <http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/>.
>
>  I realize the apples:oranges problem in making a comparison between the above and the deposit of OA scientific pre-/postprints. I just use those examples to point out that there have been other concerns (for publishers) in the past as to the viability of paid/free hybrid models. The same editor who brought out Digital History (a good friend of mine) was quite worried, six or seven years ago, that he might be hearing the electronic death knell for his job. He has long since become more comfortable with emerging models.
>
>  Regards,
>  --Erik Moore
>
>
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> Erik Moore
> Librarian for the Integrated Library System
> North Carolina State University Libraries
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> (919)515-9562	   FAX (919)513-3330
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