At 10:44 AM 9/27/00 +0100, you wrote:
On Wed, 27 Sep 2000, Richard Gordon wrote:
> I understand your arguments on making online access to the scientific
> literature free. However, I'd like to suggest a compromise, which
> some publishers might be willing to implement right away:
>
> All online journal articles will become accessible for free at a
> fixed interval after publication.
>
> A reasonable interval might be one year. Few sales of printed
> journals occur after a year, so only those people needing rapid
> access (and not willing to do the work of writing for reprints or
> accessing preprint depositories) would pay.
I'm not sure in what sense you suggest this as a compromise. If what
you mean is that it would be very helpful if journal publishers freed
their contents on their own websites a year after publication, then of
course it certainly would be very helpful (and indeed a number of
journal publishers are contemplating doing so already, and even
earlier).
Seventy-two of the journals that publish the e-version of their journals
through HighWire Press are already doing this, in most cases after 1 yr.
http://highwire.stanford.edu/lists/freeart.dtl
For those who are not content with just the self-archived "vanilla"
version of the refereed report, and are willing and able to pay (or
wait) for the publisher's "deluxe" version, let that be available as an
OPTION for as long as there is a market for it (whether it is a year
from publication or even longer).
But certainly no "compromise" should be considered that entails
continuing to needlessly holding the refereed reports hostage to the
deluxe add-ons and their tolls -- not even for a minute. (The immediate
availability of their refereed research is as important to researchers
as the immediate availability of their funds is to investors: an
"embargo" of even a day amounts to a pure, and gratuitous, loss.)
The free Web access to their articles after 1 year (or more, or less) will
whet the appetites of authors and their sponsors for _immediate_ free Web
access, with the same convenience to the authors, with the same well-known
place of access, and in the archived format (currently paper). This will
create a demand from authors and their sponsors that publishers provide
this service (IFWA) at a fair price. Currently a fair price, as
demonstrated by the Entomological Society of America, is no more than 75%
of the price of 100 paper reprints.
Should this scenario prove true, publishers (at least society ones) and
their authors may smoothly transition to what Stevan and I agree is inevitable.
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Thomas J. Walker
Department of Entomology & Nematology
University of Florida, PO Box 110620, Gainesville, FL 32611-0620
E-mail: [email protected] FAX: (352)392-0190
Web: http://csssrvr.entnem.ufl.edu/~walker/tjwbib/walker.htm
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