On Mon, 18 Feb 2002 [identity removed] wrote: > Last round: > > I think the disparity between our points of view may be embodied in the > differences between the ways that universities and libraries work in the US > vs Europe (and most of the rest of the world). > > In most of the world, universities are government institutions, whose funds > are supplied by the government, and hence they have a "socialist" set of > imperatives that make your point of view reasonable (i.e., the greatest good > for the greatest number). In the US, a few universities run this way (state > schools), but they are a minority, and most of them (with a few notable > exceptions) are not very good and hence do not draw in a lot of research > funds. The high-powered research institutions in the US are mainly private, > which means that they have a very different set of imperatives (they are > driven by institutional financial survival in a way that state-run schools > do not experience). > > I have spent all of my career at private universities in the US, and from > that perspective, your plan does not make a lot of sense. They are not paid > to do research (in fact, they lose money on it; they support it because it > draws in high quality faculty and donors that allow them to make back their > investment on tuition and donations), and it would never cross their minds > to pay for faculty to publish, even though in your example it seems to be > less expensive than maintaining a library. The reason US universities do > not flock to your plan is that once they lose exclusivity of their library > collections, they lose a major part of their academic exclusivity, which is > how they derive their income. > > Because the US is the largest block of scholars and institutions, and most > of the money in the US is in this non-socialist group of institutions, I > think you will have a hard time selling your proposition.
Dear [Identity Removed]: I don't want to prolong the last round! I note only that nothing I said had anything whatsoever to do with socialism, only with maximizing research impact, research access, research revenue, research productivity and library serials savings (i.e., researcher and research-institution self-interest). Cheers, Stevan PS Is publication and impact no longer pertinent to promotion and tenure at [---- University]?
