Martin - the ESA offers ecologists from developing countries a
special membership rate, and I believe that there is also a reduced
price for journal subscriptions from those countries. We'll keep your
points below in mind as we're negotiating with potential future
publishing partners. Pricing and access are among the issues we will
discuss with them.
David Inouye
Hi David Inouye,
Several times in recent years there have been lengthy threads on Ecolog
discussing the fact that many scientific publications are prohibitively
expensive for scholars working in poor countries or who are affiliated with
institutions with very limited resources. This seems to have devolved into
a situation where science exists to serve the wealthy, where tropical
countries serve as field stations for ecologists, but are excluded from
participating in research and benefiting from the research of their own
lands.
Do you know if the Governing Board took this into account when
considering a publishing partner? Who will control the pricing and
availability of the journals? Will there be a policy guaranteeing, or at
least facilitating, access for worthy scholars, irrespective of their
financial means?
Martin
2015-03-28 12:30 GMT-04:00 David S Schimel <[email protected]>:
> and in Ecological Applications, the January issue.
>
> Dave Schimel
>
>
> On Mar 28, 2015, at 10:05 AM, David Inouye <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > The Ecological Society of America, which has self-published its journals
> for about a century, is facing this kind of issue Martin raises below. Most
> of the societies that publish journals read by ecologists have already
> moved to partner with some of the large publishers (Wiley, Elsevier, Oxford
> University Press, Taylor and Francis, etc.), and it is likely that the ESA
> will do the same within the next year. For more information about the
> reasons behind this, see this month's editorial in Frontiers in Ecology and
> the Environment:
> http://www.esajournals.org/doi/full/10.1890/1540-9295-13.2.67.
> >
> > David Inouye
> >
