Dear David, You make some very interesting points.
On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 6:51 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > Is it really so difficult to get a paper? I have never been unable to > get a paper I wanted or needed, and I have never paid the high prices that > publishers demand for instant access on the internet. Most of us live > within 50 miles of a library. If the library does not subscribe to the > journal in which the paper appears, interlibrary loan will get it for a > reasonable cost. If you know that a paper is the one you need, that's a reasonable strategy. But if it's a case of "this might be relevant, or it might not", you're not likely to go to the trouble. I was in that position some time ago when interning at Kennedy Space Center. NASA didn't subscribe to ecological journals, as most of its staff didn't need them -- but they were certainly relevant to groups working on bioregenerative life support or environmental impact analysis. > The real problem is the demand for instant gratification that we have > developed. It is that that we are being asked to pay for. > When delivery is essentially free, why is a desire for instant gratification a problem? > Should a paper cost $50? I really don't know what it costs the journal to > produce the paper, what the demand is (well, for some papers the demand is > virtually nothing), or what distribution costs. I do know that such > services as BioOne have greatly improved the bottom lines of some scholarly > organizations, which in the long run makes papers more available, not less. > Having more papers in existence is not the same as improving the availability of each paper. > I guess in this one instance I am suggesting that free market is not so > bad. There's no free market here. A free market would exist if you could get the same paper from several different "stores". From a reader's point of view, a publisher is a monopoly. It's a natural monopoly -- but natural monopolies must be regulated. > If you really must have the paper the instant you locate it through the > free search and free abstract mechanisms of the publishers, why then pay > the asking price. Otherwise, use more traditional means of getting it. If > publishers are getting the asking price, they will maintain it, or maybe > ask a little more. If they are not getting it, they will back off. > Now this is a fascinating point. How often do people actually pay the publisher's asking price? Like you say, a reader can go to a university library (public libraries rarely subscribe to technical journals), go to an author's web site, or email the author. Heck, if you access the Web without a university IP address, Google Scholar will automatically try to find free copies of papers you search for. So is the $20 per paper price really intended to make money directly, or to get people to do something else, like joining ESA and buying a journal subscription? Jane Shevtsov -- ------------- Jane Shevtsov Ecology Ph.D. candidate, University of Georgia co-founder, www.worldbeyondborders.org "She has future plans and dreams at night. They tell her life is hard; she says 'That's all right'." --Faith Hill, "Wild One"
