Dear Malcolm, It is surprising that as scientists we would publish something that it is not freely available to all, as this stifles scientific progress. High subscription costs limit readership. The costs also create an unfair economic and professional environment with researchers from poorer nations having to ask richer colleagues to download articles they can not afford. I feel compelled to meet the requests of my South American colleagues for electronic reprints, despite the time required and questionable ethics of using my university's library subscription to share electronic reprints that are not my own. One could argue that reprints can easily be requested from authors. Those making this argument have not tried to stay abreast of the current literature by reading only abstracts or write an manuscript while waiting for authors to respond to reprint requests.
We should factor the cost of publishing into grant budgets. Public funds should not be used to support research with the results then only accessible to the fortunate few who can afford subscriptions to expensive on line resources. I support shifting publishing costs to authors, with exceptions for authors from poorer nations to allow free access to articles. "Google Scholar," currently in beta but functioning well, is certainly going to shake up publishers by creating an environment where all reprints posted by the first author are freely available to all, poor and wealthy alike. The ESA republishing permissions indicates (http://www.esapubs.org/esapubs/permissions_main.htm), "Authors may post their articles to their personal or home institution's website..." Such posted articles quickly appear in Google Scholar, opening free access to all. So one solution for authors who find the system unjust, would be to make your reprints searchable by Google Scholar (if permitted by the journal). But this is only a temporary solution, since journal costs go unpaid. best regards, Ted Feldpausch John Simaika wrote: > The Entomological Society of British Columbia asks authors to pay for their > submissions. However, each submission published in the society's journal is > available online, free of charge. I think that this is a brilliant way of > sharing a wealth of knowledge and new developments, if only on a relatively > regional scale. Certainly, bigger journals should follow this approach. > > Best wishes, > > JP Simaika. > -----Original Message----- > From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Bill Silvert > Sent: December 20, 2005 2:34 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Online journals and publications > > Werner raises a good point, for some scientists it simply is not reasonable > to pay to read articles in their field. The result is that science becomes > concentrated in wealthy countries and labs with institutional subscriptions. > > If you are not in such a place, you just don't have access. > > I don't think that science should be just for the wealthy. Those of us with > institutional subscriptions should be willing to download and transfer > papers to our less fortunate colleagues. I find it a bit embarassing that I > have to rely on a former student to help me keep abreast of developments in > my field, but that is the way that scientific publishing works. It is a > lousy system, and we should do our best to subvert it. > > Bill Silvert > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "DeerLab" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <[email protected]> > Sent: Tuesday, December 20, 2005 7:39 PM > Subject: Re: [Tws-l] online journals > > > >> When I am asked to pay 1-2 days-worth of salary to download a paper, >> I just move on. From what I gather, many colleagues are in the same >> boat. There are some good journals which supposedly on purpose do not >> even provide an email contact for the author, that is unacceptable >> because it is counterproductive. >> >> Werner Flueck >> National Research Council >> Argentina >> > >
