One thing that hasn't been pointed out - neither in Monbiot's article nor in
this discussion thus far - is that a lot of the high impact factor journals are
published by nonprofit, scientific societies (our very own ESA, as well as
AAAS, AGU, EMBO, etc.). I'm assuming that some of the revenue generated from
journal fees is used to support the mission of these societies (including
education and outreach)? I'm curious as to how that factors into people's
opinions about the current academic publishing system. This has been an
interesting discussion to follow - thanks!
Sincerely,
Rachel Licker
On Sep 6, 2011, at 8:20 AM, Bryan wrote:
> As has been pointed out here and other places, the page fees for open access
> journals is a barrier for many researchers. It is however in the long-term
> economic best interest of home institutions for some of these researchers to
> foot this bill since it reduces costs overall. That is a difficult sell as
> well since these libraries are cutting staff as well as book orders. Paying
> page costs this year will not reduce the costs of subscriptions for a long
> time. As long as researchers publish in and read the expensive journals the
> libraries will be pressured to subscribe to those journals.
>
> Bryan Heidorn, School of Information Resources and Library Science,
> University of Arizona
_______________________________________________________________
Rachel Licker
Ph.D. Candidate
Nelson Institute Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE)
University of Wisconsin-Madison
1710 University Ave., Rm. 287
Madison, WI 53726
Tel: +1-608-890-0337 (office)
http://sixstring.sage.wisc.edu/~kucharik/group/lab/Rachel_Licker.html
