[GOAL] Re: [BOAI10] Re: Elsevier's query re: "positive things from publishers that should be encouraged, celebrated, recognized"

[Eric F. Van de Velde]

To Alicia:
Here are what I consider the positive contributions by commercial
publishers. For any of the positive qualities I mention, it is easy find
counterexamples. What matters is that, on the average, the major publishers
have done a good job on the following:

- Select good editorial boards of leading scholars.
- Develop effective systems for organizing peer review.
- Produce articles/journals that look professional commensurate with the
importance of the scholarship.
- Produce an archivable historical record of scholarship.

Publishers only receive a marginally passing grade for producing searchable
databases of the scholarly record and journals. In the age of iTunes,
Netflix, etc., it is inexcusable that to search through scholarship one
must buy separate products like the Web of Knowledge in addition to the
journal subscriptions. Publishers need to work together to produce
alternative comprehensive systems.

Most commercial publishers and some society publishers (like ACS) receive
failing grades on cost containment. Because of their importance to
academia, scholarly publishers have been blessed with the opportunity to
reinvent themselves for the future without the devastating disruption other
kinds of publishers faced (newspapers, magazines, etc.). However, instead
of taking advantage of this opportunity, scholarly publishers are
squandering it for temporary financial gain. Every price increase brings
severe disruption closer. On the current path, your CEOs are betting the
existence of the company every year.

About the only company who understands the current information market is
Amazon, and everything they do is geared towards driving down costs of the
infrastructure. Your competition will not come from Amazon directly, but
from every single academic who will be able to produce a high-quality
electronic journal from his/her office. There may be only one success for
every hundred failed journals in this system, but suppose it is so easy
100,000 try...  Your brand/prestige/etc. will carry you only so far.
(Amazon is focusing on e-books production now, but it is only a matter of
time when they come out with a journal system.)

To Jean-Claude:
Blaming commercial enterprises for making too much money is like blaming
scholars for having too many good ideas. Making money is their purpose.
They will stop raising prices if doing so is in their self-interest.

The real question is why the scholarly information market is so screwed up
that publishers are in a position to keep raising prices. I am blaming site
licenses (
http://scitechsociety.blogspot.com/2011/07/what-if-libraries-were-problem.htmland
http://scitechsociety.blogspot.com/2011/09/publishers-dilemma.html), but I
am open to alternative explanations.

--Eric.

http://scitechsociety.blogspot.com

Google Voice: (626) 898-5415
Telephone:      (626) 376-5415
Skype chat, voice, or web-video: efvandevelde
E-mail: eric.f.vandevelde at gmail.com



On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 9:56 AM, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:

> Jean-Claude,
> This is a great analysis and says almost exactly some of what I was
> planning to say.
>
> We cannot de facto trust the publishers to work in our interests. There
> was a time when this was posssible - but no longer.
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Peter Murray-Rust
> Reader in Molecular Informatics
> Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
> University of Cambridge
> CB2 1EW, UK
> +44-1223-763069
>
> _______________________________________________
> GOAL mailing list
> GOAL at eprints.org
> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
>
>
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