Dear Colin, I read the accessible one of the 2 articles you suggested below, and I can quite understand why they distress the library community but I have to reiterate (and it is for the sake of the library community that I do so): This is all ABSOLUTELY IRRELEVANT to the open-access initiative, insofar as freeing access to the peer-reviewed journal literature is concerned.
The only way to free access to that literature is via BOAI Strategy 1 (self-archiving) and/or BOAI Strategy 2 (creating/converting to open-access journals). http://www.soros.org/openaccess/ Both S1 and S2 are in the hands of researchers and their institutions; they are NOT within the hands of libraries or librarians (although the latter would greatly benefit from the success of S1 and S2). Nor is the real cause the size of publishers' profits: it is that access-tolls need to be paid at all, to this give-away peer-reviewed research, written by and for researchers. It has so far proved difficult, and is certainly taking much longer than it might, to persuade researchers and their institutions that something needs to be done, and what that something is (S1 & S2). The appeal can only be to what is in the direct interest of researchers and their institutions (namely, the uptake and impact of their own research, and their access to the research of others). Researchers have no interest whatsoever in the details of the journal publishing profit-margins, nor, alas, in the details of library woes. S1 and S2 have to be shown to benefit THEM, not to benefit libraries or punish venal publishers. So I am convinced that focussing on Elsevier's profits, etc. is simply a distraction, at a time when what is really needed is a much clearer focus on what really needs to be done, how, and why, now. Best wishes, Stevan On Fri, 28 Jun 2002, Colin Steele wrote: > You might be interested in the lengthy interview with Crispin Davis CEO of > Reed Elsevier in which he states "how he turned the outfit around, why he > seldom checks the stock price, and how his secretary keeps her job" > http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2002/tc20020626_6092.htm > and also the piece in the UK Bookseller for 7 June 2002 on Taylor and Francis > on the career of Anthony Selvey and the profits he made including the > statement "Companies such as Taylor and Francis earn most of their revenues > from institutional Libraries (that) look like safe havens" I don't think this > article is on line.
