----- Original Message ----- From: "Stevan Harnad" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, July 10, 2000 4:32 PM Subject: WHO WILL PAY FOR WHAT?
> On Mon, 10 Jul 2000, Marvin wrote: > > > Max Frankel..NY Times Magazine (Sunday, July 9): > > > > "when will you get The Nirvana News?... not until the Web > > worshipers quit their rhapsodizing about "free" digital news and > > figure out a way to pay for its production. The Web has not > > produced very good reporter robots or electronic editors. Nor has > > it figured out how to pay the costly humans needed to gather, > > interpret, write and package information in the coming world." > > > > Frankel wrote about newspapers, but most of his column is equally > > applicable for scholarly publications. > > How is it applicable, Marvin? It is researchers who gather, interpret, > write and package their research reports. The only thing they cannot do > for themselves is the Quality-Control and its Certification (QCC). > These cost money to do well, do they not? And I wsn't only talking about who gets payed for what. There is more than that to the column, and I said where anyone can read the whole column - for free. > > Most newspapers pay their writers, scholarly journals don't. Both have > > costs beyond paying (or not paying) for manuscripts. > > If authors self-archive their final refereed drafts, and the distributed > institutional Open Archives house them in perpetuo, what exactly are > those further costs, other than QCC? > If there is only self-archiving in who knows how many sites, there will be chaos. > > Keeping in mind "he who pays the piper calls the tune", we need some > > realistic discussion on who will pay for free-to-the-reader scholarly > > publication. I didn't hear it at the meeting, and I haven't seen much > > on this forum. > > And here I was, thinking that maybe I was repeating the formula too > often: Have you seen much of this formula? SLP - 70%(SLP) = QCC > > Stevan Harnad I've seen many things said that I think are simplistic. I've been in charge of the expenses of one journal recently. Have you? Anyone can invent numbers.
