Re: Book on future of STM publishers
Catching up with this thread late, I find this interesting as Edinbugh
University Library has just been funded by JISC to run an e-theses project
for the UK, to provide advice on the development of Electronic Theses
Dissertation (ETD) services ('Theses Alive!').
I agree with Fytton that the culture of the discipline is what is important.
If the expectation is that the thesis may become a book with a sale value,
then the author must feel free to restrict it, and the software which has
been developed to date for ETDs will normally allow such restriction. I
assume this restriction will apply mostly in the Arts Humanities area.
Scientific theses are also restricted, however, in cases where
commercialisation may be an issue (e.g. via patenting).
Such uses of restriction are fine and perfectly respectable. What is less
respectable is the invoking of restriction because of fears that 'prior
publication' on a free server will jeopardise the future career of a
researcher because journal publishers will refuse to publish their work.
This fear is widespread and is promulgated by faculty as well as among
doctoral students - who of course are the most vulnerable to any suggestion
that their careers may be damaged by premature publication of research. In
fact, the fear is largely unfounded, but - inevitably - authors will be
cautious in the absence of a guarantee. The current situation in which no
one seems quite sure whether or not a publisher might blacklist a
researcher - irrespective of the views of individual journal editors, and of
publisher policy statements - acts as a brake upon free scholarly
publication, in both the eprints and in the ETD arenas.
But I suspect we worry too much about the cases in which free publication is
hampered by fears over publisher reactions. If we were to concentrate only
on the literature whose authors had no anxieties whatsoever about free
publication of articles or theses, we could still build a significant corpus
of freely available research online, which would eventually lead to the
restricted material - where the restriction is based on fear of career
damage (rather than worries about income loss) - joining the rest of the
corpus. In other words, let's concentrate for now on the low-hanging fruit,
which I suspect there is in some abundance.
John
- Created on Wed 7 Aug 2002
John MacColl
SELLIC Director
Sub-Librarian, Online Services www.lib.ed.ac.uk
University of EdinburghTel: 0131 650 7275/3375 or 07808 170075
-Original Message-
From: September 1998 American Scientist Forum
[mailto:american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org]On Behalf
Of Fytton
Rowland
Sent: Thursday, July 18, 2002 10:06
To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org
Subject: Re: Book on future of STM publishers
This is an interesting point. In some disciplines, there is a
tradition of
writing journal articles based on one's PhD research -- some of
them perhaps
published before the thesis is written -- while in other fields
the practice is
to turn one's thesis into a book. However, the thesis itself, in
its original
form as an examination document, is usually made publicly available in the
library of its home university, and is indexed in various
secondary services
such as Dissertation Abstracts. If universities in future mostly
have OAI-
compliant servers, and theses are submitted in electronic as well
as printed
form, there seems to be no obstacle to each university mounting
its own theses
on its server for free worldwide access.
But... Stevan often makes the point that his concern is purely with the
scholarly journal literature, which is given away by its authors,
and which
should be avialable free of charge to other scholars. He goes on
to say that
this argument does not apply to other kinds of publication for
which authors
are traditionally paid, which is the case with books, even
scholarly books. On
that argument, having to pay 30 Euros for Meier's book is o.k.
Hmm... So, if we are in a discipline that uses journals, free
access is o.k.;
free access to the raw thesis is also o.k.; but if the discipline
is one that
has the tradition of a book based on the thesis, then free access
is not o.k.
What do others think of this line of argument?
Fytton.
Fytton Rowland, Dept of Information Science, Loughborough University, UK.
Quoting Thomas Krichel kric...@openlib.org:
M. Meier writes
An exposé is availabel under http://www.ep.uni-muenchen.de/themen.htm.
The
book as a whole will unfortunately not be available online for free.
I understand that the book is Michael's PhD thesis. I think that
it would be interesting to understand the reasons why it is not
freely available online. If the FOS movement can not convince scholars
in scholarly communication to make their work freely available online,
we do have a problem. I would like to understand
Re: Book on future of STM publishers
On Mon, 22 Jul 2002, Fytton Rowland wrote: It has always been quite easy (if you have the money) to get a book printed. Publishers are not printers. The business of getting a book printed is only one (and not the most important) of a publishing company's functions. By the same token, putting a work on the web is not the most important publishing function. Editing to improve the quality of the raw product from the author is one of the important ones, and marketing to bring it to the attention of those who might be interested in its content is the other. I believe that both of these functions remain important in an electronic-only environment. In addition, the publishers' primary contribution would be their (selection and) investment. Spending mondy conveys a level of recognition that lifts the work far beyond the chaos of vanity self- archiving. For readers and buyers it is a dramatic change in signal-to-noise. It also commits the publishers to obtaining a return on their investment achieved through the hard work of dissemination, distribution, marketing, salesmanship, and whatever else one might call the toils of publishing. Albert Henderson Former Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY 1994-2000 70244.1...@compuserve.com
Re: Book on future of STM publishers
I quite agree with Bernard Lang. There are better ways. And, as a scholar, you might consider the loss in visibility (and hence potantial authority) you will suffer for a mere 400 dollars. Have you looked at the NDLTD site (http://www.ndltd.org)? I assume Stevan pointed it out in his answer. He generally is very thorough in his use of references. The next ETD meeting, incidentally, where putting theses on-line for free will be in Berlin. You might want to make a trip there. Meanwhile, I encourage you to pull out of an obviously poor deal and place your thesis on-line within a reputable open-access archive. Best, Jean-Claude Guédon Le 19 Juillet 2002 04:42, M. Meier a écrit : As many of you wonder about the outdated media in which the dissertation is published, I will give you the obvious explanation: The University of Munich requires that all Ph.D manuscripts have to be handed in in print form, no online or CD-ROM version allowed. To recover the printing costs (appr. $ 400), every Ph.D. candidate tries to find a decent enough publisher to get at least a small percentage back. My publisher, a newly founded PoD boutique, would not be very happy if the book appeared as a free document on the www. Regards Michael Meier This is an interesting point. In some disciplines, there is a tradition of writing journal articles based on one's PhD research -- some of them perhaps published before the thesis is written -- while in other fields the practice is to turn one's thesis into a book. However, the thesis itself, in its original form as an examination document, is usually made publicly available in the library of its home university, and is indexed in various secondary services such as Dissertation Abstracts. If universities in future mostly have OAI- compliant servers, and theses are submitted in electronic as well as printed form, there seems to be no obstacle to each university mounting its own theses on its server for free worldwide access. But... Stevan often makes the point that his concern is purely with the scholarly journal literature, which is given away by its authors, and which should be avialable free of charge to other scholars. He goes on to say that this argument does not apply to other kinds of publication for which authors are traditionally paid, which is the case with books, even scholarly books. On that argument, having to pay 30 Euros for Meier's book is o.k. Hmm... So, if we are in a discipline that uses journals, free access is o.k.; free access to the raw thesis is also o.k.; but if the discipline is one that has the tradition of a book based on the thesis, then free access is not o.k. What do others think of this line of argument? Fytton. Fytton Rowland, Dept of Information Science, Loughborough University, UK. Quoting Thomas Krichel kric...@openlib.org: M. Meier writes An exposé is availabel under http://www.ep.uni-muenchen.de/themen.htm. The book as a whole will unfortunately not be available online for free. I understand that the book is Michael's PhD thesis. I think that it would be interesting to understand the reasons why it is not freely available online. If the FOS movement can not convince scholars in scholarly communication to make their work freely available online, we do have a problem. I would like to understand what the problem is here. Cheers, Thomas Krichel mailto:kric...@openlib.org http://openlib.org/home/krichel RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
Re: Book on future of STM publishers
This may be a poor deal, but we should not blame the author in particular , as it is apparently standard practice in some European countries-- they seem to have a more archaic procedure than in North America. Fyttton, as you, Steven, and others have pointed out, much better ways are available. In evaluating them, keep in mind that it is very unusual for a thesis to develop such interest! The author should indeed be congratulated. Jean-Claude Guédon wrote: I quite agree with Bernard Lang. There are better ways. And, as a scholar, you might consider the loss in visibility (and hence potantial authority) you will suffer for a mere 400 dollars. Have you looked at the NDLTD site (http://www.ndltd.org)? I assume Stevan pointed it out in his answer. He generally is very thorough in his use of references. The next ETD meeting, incidentally, where putting theses on-line for free will be in Berlin. You might want to make a trip there. Meanwhile, I encourage you to pull out of an obviously poor deal and place your thesis on-line within a reputable open-access archive. Best, Jean-Claude Guédon Le 19 Juillet 2002 04:42, M. Meier a écrit : As many of you wonder about the outdated media in which the dissertation is published, I will give you the obvious explanation: The University of Munich requires that all Ph.D manuscripts have to be handed in in print form, no online or CD-ROM version allowed. To recover the printing costs (appr. $ 400), every Ph.D. candidate tries to find a decent enough publisher to get at least a small percentage back. My publisher, a newly founded PoD boutique, would not be very happy if the book appeared as a free document on the www. Regards Michael Meier Dr. David Goodman Research Librarian and Biological Science Bibliographer Princeton University Library Princeton, NJ 08544-0001 phone: 609-258-7785 fax: 609-258-2627 e-mail: dgood...@princeton.edu
Re: Book on future of STM publishers
One question and one comment. Thomas, are you suggesting that PhD students should not have to pay the printing and binding costs of their theses? That the University should print and bind the thesis for the student free of charge? Or, more sensibly, that the University should stop requiring printed theses and allow submission in electronic form -- on a CD-ROM, if they wish to avoid any subsequent changes to the thesis? Re tollgating entry to the academic profession -- it needs to noted that only a minority of PhDs become academics. Some go off to practice their profession in non-academic environments, and others leave their academic field and become accountants, managers or whatever. Fytton. Quoting Thomas Krichel kric...@openlib.org: Fytton Rowland writes But here the students usually just groan and bear it! Getting the money for the printing cost back sounds like a flimsy excuse to me. If someone does a doctorate to become a member of the academic profession, then toll-gating the PhD does not seem to me to be a good strategy, because of the adverse effects that it has on dissemination. And the same thing should hold for libraries. Libraries should pay for printing out students work, archive local dissertations on paper (because of the problems of digital preservation), and make them available through Eprints, and pay for this by not buying dissertations produced anywhere else, or reduce serials holdings. Cheers, Thomas Krichel mailto:kric...@openlib.org http://openlib.org/home/krichel RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
Re: Book on future of STM publishers
It has always been quite easy (if you have the money) to get a book printed. Publishers are not printers. The business of getting a book printed is only one (and not the most important) of a publishing company's functions. Editing to improve the quality of the raw product from the author is one of the important ones, and marketing to bring it to the attention of those who might be interested in its content is the other. I believe that both of these functions remain important in an electronic-only environment. Fytton Rowland. Quoting muir gray muir.g...@ntlworld.com: I think the debate is too focussed on the fiuture of the journal and am pleased to see that it now addresses the monograph. a colleague abd i have just made a mongraph by working directly with a printer and making simulataneouspaper and electronic forms opf the book with no need for bookshops or warehouses. the printing revolution isas important as the pagemaking revolution muir gray www.resourcefulpatient.org - Original Message - From: Oldroyd, Bill bill.oldr...@bl.uk To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Sent: Friday, July 19, 2002 1:47 PM Subject: Re: Book on future of STM publishers Just for the record, Bill -Original Message- From: Tim Brody [mailto:tdb...@ecs.soton.ac.uk] Sent: 19 July 2002 13:02 To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Subject: Re: Book on future of STM publishers It would seem, therefore, that research dissertations may be a potentially valuable resource after all - one that for too long has been accessible only from library archives. Approximately 140,000 UK theses are available from the British Library as non-digital copies or exceptionally as loans to registered institutions. See http://www.bl.uk/services/document/btsindex.html Bill ** Now open at the British Library Galleries: Trading Places : the East India Company and Asia (to 22 September) * The information contained in this e-mail is confidential and may be legally privileged. It is intended for the addressee(s) only. If you are not the intended recipient, please delete this e-mail and notify the postmas...@bl.uk : The contents of this e-mail must not be disclosed or copied without the sender's consent. The statements and opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the British Library. The British Library does not take any responsibility for the views of the author. *
Re: Book on future of STM publishers
Fytton Rowland writes Thomas, are you suggesting that PhD students should not have to pay the printing and binding costs of their theses? Yes. That the University should print and bind the thesis for the student free of charge? Theses have been bound and printed to make them accessible and preserve them. If universities think that this is still necessary, they should do it on behalf of the student. Or, more sensibly, that the University should stop requiring printed theses and allow submission in electronic form -- on a CD-ROM, if they wish to avoid any subsequent changes to the thesis? Universities should preserve the students' works, because students don't have the lifespan to take on that task. This is a principle that should be medium-independent. Cheers, Thomas Krichel mailto:kric...@openlib.org http://openlib.org/home/krichel RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
Re: Book on future of STM publishers
Fytton Rowland writes But here the students usually just groan and bear it! Getting the money for the printing cost back sounds like a flimsy excuse to me. If someone does a doctorate to become a member of the academic profession, then toll-gating the PhD does not seem to me to be a good strategy, because of the adverse effects that it has on dissemination. And the same thing should hold for libraries. Libraries should pay for printing out students work, archive local dissertations on paper (because of the problems of digital preservation), and make them available through Eprints, and pay for this by not buying dissertations produced anywhere else, or reduce serials holdings. Cheers, Thomas Krichel mailto:kric...@openlib.org http://openlib.org/home/krichel RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
Re: Book on future of STM publishers
Even in Information Systems many details of how a field trial or a controlled experiment was conducted never appear in the professional journal, also the instruments used in the study. The New Jersey Institute of Technology started putting all Ph.D. thesis on the Web two years ago. We currently have created an on line webcenter for evaluation studies of distance learning http://www.alnrsearch.org under sponsor ship from the Sloan Foundation and one of the main objectives is try and collect the different evaluation instruments used in various studies for the benefit of researchers in the field. A great deal of very important information does not make many of the journals because of limitations on just how much one can publish in a single article.
Re: Book on future of STM publishers
As many of you wonder about the outdated media in which the dissertation is published, I will give you the obvious explanation: The University of Munich requires that all Ph.D manuscripts have to be handed in in print form, no online or CD-ROM version allowed. To recover the printing costs (appr. $ 400), every Ph.D. candidate tries to find a decent enough publisher to get at least a small percentage back. My publisher, a newly founded PoD boutique, would not be very happy if the book appeared as a free document on the www. Regards Michael Meier This is an interesting point. In some disciplines, there is a tradition of writing journal articles based on one's PhD research -- some of them perhaps published before the thesis is written -- while in other fields the practice is to turn one's thesis into a book. However, the thesis itself, in its original form as an examination document, is usually made publicly available in the library of its home university, and is indexed in various secondary services such as Dissertation Abstracts. If universities in future mostly have OAI- compliant servers, and theses are submitted in electronic as well as printed form, there seems to be no obstacle to each university mounting its own theses on its server for free worldwide access. But... Stevan often makes the point that his concern is purely with the scholarly journal literature, which is given away by its authors, and which should be avialable free of charge to other scholars. He goes on to say that this argument does not apply to other kinds of publication for which authors are traditionally paid, which is the case with books, even scholarly books. On that argument, having to pay 30 Euros for Meier's book is o.k. Hmm... So, if we are in a discipline that uses journals, free access is o.k.; free access to the raw thesis is also o.k.; but if the discipline is one that has the tradition of a book based on the thesis, then free access is not o.k. What do others think of this line of argument? Fytton. Fytton Rowland, Dept of Information Science, Loughborough University, UK. Quoting Thomas Krichel kric...@openlib.org: M. Meier writes An exposé is availabel under http://www.ep.uni-muenchen.de/themen.htm. The book as a whole will unfortunately not be available online for free. I understand that the book is Michael's PhD thesis. I think that it would be interesting to understand the reasons why it is not freely available online. If the FOS movement can not convince scholars in scholarly communication to make their work freely available online, we do have a problem. I would like to understand what the problem is here. Cheers, Thomas Krichel mailto:kric...@openlib.org http://openlib.org/home/krichel RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel -- GMX - Die Kommunikationsplattform im Internet. http://www.gmx.net
Re: Book on future of STM publishers
I presume Albert Henderson's's assertion that student work is of lesser value is based on personal opinion rather than on any scientometric study of the relative impact of different types of research. I believe the majority of the members of research groups consist of research students (PhDs); hence the novel work that research students undertake forms the bedrock from which research in general is developed (not only through the students carrying their own work on into research posts and professorships, but also as it feeds directly into the student's research group and the research community in general). It would seem, therefore, that research dissertations may be a potentially valuable resource after all - one that for too long has been accessible only from library archives. All the best, Tim Brody (PhD Research Student) - Original Message - From: Albert Henderson chess...@compuserve.com To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Sent: Thursday, July 18, 2002 9:09 PM Subject: Re: Book on future of STM publishers The fundamental flaw in Stevan's position is that it discounts the receipt of value -- recognition and targeted dissemination -- exchanged by the journal author. If one recognizes that the journal publisher does provide such value, the journal author is on the same footing as the book author. No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money, as Samuel Johnson observed. Steven's position is out of bounds. The question is moot. In the case of the dissertation, the acceptance is of a lesser value, since it is student work. Most books derived from dissertations require a good deal of additional work before they are publishable in the usual sense and recognizable by the world beyond dissertation examiners. The future of STM publishing is a great topic for magazines that have a short shelf life. They can attract a curious readership and sell lots of advertising by puzzling over questions without answers. I for one have serious doubts whether the future of any industry niche would be a fit subject for a student dissertation. Most predictive visions offered decades ago by experts are today only meaningful as evidence of lobbying and other promotional efforts. Book or dissertation, I would expect to shelve this topic near astrology. Albert Henderson Former Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY 1994-2000 70244.1...@compuserve.com . .
Re: Book on future of STM publishers
Just for the record, Bill -Original Message- From: Tim Brody [mailto:tdb...@ecs.soton.ac.uk] Sent: 19 July 2002 13:02 To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Subject: Re: Book on future of STM publishers It would seem, therefore, that research dissertations may be a potentially valuable resource after all - one that for too long has been accessible only from library archives. Approximately 140,000 UK theses are available from the British Library as non-digital copies or exceptionally as loans to registered institutions. See http://www.bl.uk/services/document/btsindex.html Bill ** Now open at the British Library Galleries: Trading Places : the East India Company and Asia (to 22 September) * The information contained in this e-mail is confidential and may be legally privileged. It is intended for the addressee(s) only. If you are not the intended recipient, please delete this e-mail and notify the postmas...@bl.uk : The contents of this e-mail must not be disclosed or copied without the sender's consent. The statements and opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the British Library. The British Library does not take any responsibility for the views of the author. *
Re: Book on future of STM publishers
universities may be silly. but you have to be joking, there are thousand of more effective ways to make $400 than fighting to be published. Bernard On Fri, Jul 19, 2002 at 10:42:11AM +0200, M. Meier wrote: As many of you wonder about the outdated media in which the dissertation is published, I will give you the obvious explanation: The University of Munich requires that all Ph.D manuscripts have to be handed in in print form, no online or CD-ROM version allowed. To recover the printing costs (appr. $ 400), every Ph.D. candidate tries to find a decent enough publisher to get at least a small percentage back. My publisher, a newly founded PoD boutique, would not be very happy if the book appeared as a free document on the www. Regards Michael Meier This is an interesting point. In some disciplines, there is a tradition of writing journal articles based on one's PhD research -- some of them perhaps published before the thesis is written -- while in other fields the practice is to turn one's thesis into a book. However, the thesis itself, in its original form as an examination document, is usually made publicly available in the library of its home university, and is indexed in various secondary services such as Dissertation Abstracts. If universities in future mostly have OAI- compliant servers, and theses are submitted in electronic as well as printed form, there seems to be no obstacle to each university mounting its own theses on its server for free worldwide access. But... Stevan often makes the point that his concern is purely with the scholarly journal literature, which is given away by its authors, and which should be avialable free of charge to other scholars. He goes on to say that this argument does not apply to other kinds of publication for which authors are traditionally paid, which is the case with books, even scholarly books. On that argument, having to pay 30 Euros for Meier's book is o.k. Hmm... So, if we are in a discipline that uses journals, free access is o.k.; free access to the raw thesis is also o.k.; but if the discipline is one that has the tradition of a book based on the thesis, then free access is not o.k. What do others think of this line of argument? Fytton. Fytton Rowland, Dept of Information Science, Loughborough University, UK. Quoting Thomas Krichel kric...@openlib.org: M. Meier writes An exposé is availabel under http://www.ep.uni-muenchen.de/themen.htm. The book as a whole will unfortunately not be available online for free. I understand that the book is Michael's PhD thesis. I think that it would be interesting to understand the reasons why it is not freely available online. If the FOS movement can not convince scholars in scholarly communication to make their work freely available online, we do have a problem. I would like to understand what the problem is here. Cheers, Thomas Krichel mailto:kric...@openlib.org http://openlib.org/home/krichel RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel -- GMX - Die Kommunikationsplattform im Internet. http://www.gmx.net -- Non aux Brevets Logiciels - No to Software Patents SIGNEZhttp://petition.eurolinux.org/SIGN bernard.l...@inria.fr ,_ /\o\o/Tel +33 1 3963 5644 http://pauillac.inria.fr/~lang/ ^ Fax +33 1 3963 5469 INRIA / B.P. 105 / 78153 Le Chesnay CEDEX / France Je n'exprime que mon opinion - I express only my opinion CAGED BEHIND WINDOWS or FREE WITH LINUX
Re: Book on future of STM publishers
This is quite interesting -- how many copies do you have to get printed, Michael? And is there a requirement for proper print, as opposed to word- processing/photocopying? In UK universities the student typically has to provide three or four copies of their thesis, which nowadays they usually word-process themselves and then photocopy. But they have to be properly bound, so I guess that the total cost (paper, toner, photocopying and binding) to the student isn't far short of $400 -- over $200, anyway. But here the students usually just groan and bear it! Fytton. Quoting M. Meier meie...@gmx.de: As many of you wonder about the outdated media in which the dissertation is published, I will give you the obvious explanation: The University of Munich requires that all Ph.D manuscripts have to be handed in in print form, no online or CD-ROM version allowed. To recover the printing costs (appr. $ 400), every Ph.D. candidate tries to find a decent enough publisher to get at least a small percentage back. My publisher, a newly founded PoD boutique, would not be very happy if the book appeared as a free document on the www. Regards Michael Meier This is an interesting point. In some disciplines, there is a tradition of writing journal articles based on one's PhD research -- some of them perhaps published before the thesis is written -- while in other fields the practice is to turn one's thesis into a book. However, the thesis itself, in its original form as an examination document, is usually made publicly available in the library of its home university, and is indexed in various secondary services such as Dissertation Abstracts. If universities in future mostly have OAI- compliant servers, and theses are submitted in electronic as well as printed form, there seems to be no obstacle to each university mounting its own theses on its server for free worldwide access. But... Stevan often makes the point that his concern is purely with the scholarly journal literature, which is given away by its authors, and which should be avialable free of charge to other scholars. He goes on to say that this argument does not apply to other kinds of publication for which authors are traditionally paid, which is the case with books, even scholarly books. On that argument, having to pay 30 Euros for Meier's book is o.k. Hmm... So, if we are in a discipline that uses journals, free access is o.k.; free access to the raw thesis is also o.k.; but if the discipline is one that has the tradition of a book based on the thesis, then free access is not o.k. What do others think of this line of argument? Fytton. Fytton Rowland, Dept of Information Science, Loughborough University, UK. Quoting Thomas Krichel kric...@openlib.org: M. Meier writes An exposé is availabel under http://www.ep.uni-muenchen.de/themen.htm. The book as a whole will unfortunately not be available online for free. I understand that the book is Michael's PhD thesis. I think that it would be interesting to understand the reasons why it is not freely available online. If the FOS movement can not convince scholars in scholarly communication to make their work freely available online, we do have a problem. I would like to understand what the problem is here. Cheers, Thomas Krichel mailto:kric...@openlib.org http://openlib.org/home/krichel RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel -- GMX - Die Kommunikationsplattform im Internet. http://www.gmx.net
Re: Book on future of STM publishers
M. Meier writes An exposé is availabel under http://www.ep.uni-muenchen.de/themen.htm. The book as a whole will unfortunately not be available online for free. I understand that the book is Michael's PhD thesis. I think that it would be interesting to understand the reasons why it is not freely available online. If the FOS movement can not convince scholars in scholarly communication to make their work freely available online, we do have a problem. I would like to understand what the problem is here. Cheers, Thomas Krichel mailto:kric...@openlib.org http://openlib.org/home/krichel RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
Re: Book on future of STM publishers
This is an interesting point. In some disciplines, there is a tradition of writing journal articles based on one's PhD research -- some of them perhaps published before the thesis is written -- while in other fields the practice is to turn one's thesis into a book. However, the thesis itself, in its original form as an examination document, is usually made publicly available in the library of its home university, and is indexed in various secondary services such as Dissertation Abstracts. If universities in future mostly have OAI- compliant servers, and theses are submitted in electronic as well as printed form, there seems to be no obstacle to each university mounting its own theses on its server for free worldwide access. But... Stevan often makes the point that his concern is purely with the scholarly journal literature, which is given away by its authors, and which should be avialable free of charge to other scholars. He goes on to say that this argument does not apply to other kinds of publication for which authors are traditionally paid, which is the case with books, even scholarly books. On that argument, having to pay 30 Euros for Meier's book is o.k. Hmm... So, if we are in a discipline that uses journals, free access is o.k.; free access to the raw thesis is also o.k.; but if the discipline is one that has the tradition of a book based on the thesis, then free access is not o.k. What do others think of this line of argument? Fytton. Fytton Rowland, Dept of Information Science, Loughborough University, UK. Quoting Thomas Krichel kric...@openlib.org: M. Meier writes An exposé is availabel under http://www.ep.uni-muenchen.de/themen.htm. The book as a whole will unfortunately not be available online for free. I understand that the book is Michael's PhD thesis. I think that it would be interesting to understand the reasons why it is not freely available online. If the FOS movement can not convince scholars in scholarly communication to make their work freely available online, we do have a problem. I would like to understand what the problem is here. Cheers, Thomas Krichel mailto:kric...@openlib.org http://openlib.org/home/krichel RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
Re: Book on future of STM publishers
Fytton Rowland, Dept Information Science, Loughborough Univ, UK wrote: ...In some disciplines, there is a tradition of writing journal articles based on one's PhD research -- some of them perhaps published before the thesis is written -- while in other fields the practice is to turn one's thesis into a book. However, the thesis itself, in its original form as an examination document, is usually made publicly available in the library of its home university, and is indexed in various secondary services such as Dissertation Abstracts. If universities in future mostly have OAI-compliant servers, and theses are submitted in electronic as well as printed form, there seems to be no obstacle to each university mounting its own theses on its server for free worldwide access. There is (and should be) a growing number of Open Access Eprint Archives for University Theses and Dissertations. I append a list of Universities that are already providing open online access to their theses in this way at the end of this message. Stevan often makes the point that his concern is purely with the scholarly journal literature, which is given away by its authors, and which should be available free of charge to other scholars. He goes on to say that this argument does not apply to other kinds of publication for which authors are traditionally paid, which is the case with books, even scholarly books So, if we are in a discipline that uses journals, free access is o.k.; free access to the raw thesis is also o.k.; but if the discipline is one that has the tradition of a book based on the thesis, then free access is not o.k. What do others think of this line of argument? This interesting puzzle is certainly worth discussing. I can guess the answer: For 99% of theses/dissertations, the optimal/inevitable outcome is exactly the same as for 100% of the peer-reviewed research literature: Open Access. But for perhaps 1% of dissertations -- those from which their authors hope to make a book that can make some money for them -- those authors may not want to provide open access to their dissertation (beyond the mandatory deposit in their university library, and whatever can be attained by interlibrary loan, etc.). (I doubt this has much to do with discipline differences: It has more to do with expectation of sellability, and whether the author wishes to make a career in research or in writing.) There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. I see no reason why authors should be denied possible sales revenue if they wish it. This topic has already been discussed in this Forum under the thread Journal Papers vs. Books: The Direct/Indirect Income Trade-off http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0317.html and has since been published as an article: Harnad, S., Varian, H. Parks, R. (2000) Academic publishing in the online era: What Will Be For-Fee And What Will Be For-Free? Culture Machine 2 http://culturemachine.tees.ac.uk/Cmach/Backissues/j002/Articles/art_harn.htm and http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/documents/disk0/00/00/17/00/index.html By way of summary: Hal Varian pointed out that, statistically speaking, MOST books fail to make money for their authors. I replied that where there's life there's hope, and that hope of sales revenue is what drives a good deal of human creativity and productivity in certain areas. With no hope of sales revenue, some things simply would never get written in the first place. Having said that, it is also true that even non-give-away authors sometimes give away their early work in order to publicize it and to build a readership for later work. This would certainly apply to thesis-work too. In addition, the book version is often much more readable than the thesis, so a give-away open-access thesis might serve as an advertisement for the non-give-away, toll-access book version. And finally, thesis authors can make their own decisions on the trade-off between maximizing the research impact of their theses through open access and maximizing their sales income from toll-access. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#1.2 I doubt that many thesis authors believe they have a potential best-seller on their hands and, on reflection, and in the context of the 99% of theses that will be openly accessible, more and more will opt for open access. But this is their choice. No coercion is necessary. On the contrary, any hint of coercion will only work against the cause of open-access for the remaining 99% Now, the growing list of Open Access Archives for Theses and Dissertations: Virginia Tech Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Collection http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september96/theses/09fox.html Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) http://www.ndltd.org/ Caltech Electronic Theses and Dissertations http://etd.library.caltech.edu/ CCSD theses-EN-ligne http://theses-en-ligne.in2p3.fr/
Re: Book on future of STM publishers
on Thu, 18 Jul 2002 Fytton Rowland j.f.rowl...@lboro.ac.uk wrote: This is an interesting point. In some disciplines, there is a tradition of writing journal articles based on one's PhD research -- some of them perhaps published before the thesis is written -- while in other fields the practice is to turn one's thesis into a book. However, the thesis itself, in its original form as an examination document, is usually made publicly available in the library of its home university, and is indexed in various secondary services such as Dissertation Abstracts. If universities in future mostly have OAI- compliant servers, and theses are submitted in electronic as well as printed form, there seems to be no obstacle to each university mounting its own theses on its server for free worldwide access. But... Stevan often makes the point that his concern is purely with the scholarly journal literature, which is given away by its authors, and which should be avialable free of charge to other scholars. He goes on to say that this argument does not apply to other kinds of publication for which authors are traditionally paid, which is the case with books, even scholarly books. On that argument, having to pay 30 Euros for Meier's book is o.k. Hmm... So, if we are in a discipline that uses journals, free access is o.k.; free access to the raw thesis is also o.k.; but if the discipline is one that has the tradition of a book based on the thesis, then free access is not o.k. What do others think of this line of argument? The fundamental flaw in Stevan's position is that it discounts the receipt of value -- recognition and targeted dissemination -- exchanged by the journal author. If one recognizes that the journal publisher does provide such value, the journal author is on the same footing as the book author. No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money, as Samuel Johnson observed. Steven's position is out of bounds. The question is moot. In the case of the dissertation, the acceptance is of a lesser value, since it is student work. Most books derived from dissertations require a good deal of additional work before they are publishable in the usual sense and recognizable by the world beyond dissertation examiners. The future of STM publishing is a great topic for magazines that have a short shelf life. They can attract a curious readership and sell lots of advertising by puzzling over questions without answers. I for one have serious doubts whether the future of any industry niche would be a fit subject for a student dissertation. Most predictive visions offered decades ago by experts are today only meaningful as evidence of lobbying and other promotional efforts. Book or dissertation, I would expect to shelve this topic near astrology. Best wishes, Albert Henderson Former Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY 1994-2000 70244.1...@compuserve.com . .
