[GOAL] Re: Is $99 per article realistic and compatible with profits - or too high a price?

[Heather Morrison]

Arthur below gives this example of a commercial service scholars might  
not be averse to - Medifocus.

As an example, I look at the Medifocus guidebook on peripheral  
neuropathy costs $32.95 for the print version or $24.95 for the  
electronic version.
https://www.medifocus.com/

Comments:

1.	Scholars giving away their works for free so that a company like  
Medifocus can sell in this manner is not much different from giving  
away works to commercial companies to profit from toll access. All of  
the arguments about public access to publicly funded works apply in  
this instance as well. Another way to express this: if it's okay for  
scholars to take the results of publicly funded research and give them  
away for companies to sell behind tolls for a profit, then what's  
wrong with toll access?

2.    These prices might seem moderate in the developed world but for  
people in the developing world may be equal to month's wages. Why  
should scholars give away their works to be sold by profitable  
companies who have no obligation to make their value-added works  
available to the scholar or in the scholar's country? (This is one of  
the reasons I recommend Sharealike).

3.	For a great list of free resources produced by not-for-profit  
entities, see Medline Plus, a consumer health resource clearinghouse  
produced by the National Institutes of Health: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/

4.	Medifocus looks, at a quick glance, like a quality operation, and  
if Arthur is recommending it I'm happy to take his word for this.  
However, it's not hard to see pieces of scholarly works being  
incorporated into quack pseudo-science designed to sell the latest in  
snake oil. This would violate the author's moral rights no doubt, but  
then I'm not sure that it is wise to count on the ethics of snake oil  
purveyors.

best,

Heather Morrison


On 28-Jan-13, at 8:06 PM, Arthur Sale wrote:

> Before this goes too far, let's establish that commercial re-use is  
> possible
> and is used. Scholars may not be averse to it.

>
> I have in mind monitoring organisations, which for a subscription,  
> will
> survey the literature and provide subscribers with relevant data  
> that they
> have culled. Think of newspaper cutting services and current awareness
> services which provide politicians and senior scholars with relevant  
> data
> that they might have missed. Asking them to click on a download link  
> is poor
> service, in this context. Another is Medifocus: attention to current  
> info on
> your medical condition. Yes they don't yet seem to provide the full  
> text,
> but they might.
>
> Moral rights are not affected, of course. None of these services  
> pretends
> that it is their work. What they have done is to bring it to your  
> attention
> to read.
>
> Then there is the second echelon of re-using parts of the  
> publication, such
> as images, charts, tables, etc, and the whole field of data mining.  
> If one
> puts together various studies can one come up with something bigger  
> and new?
> For example a longitudinal study of tooth decay rates over centuries?
>
> Arthur Sale
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On  
> Behalf
> Of Heather Morrison
> Sent: Tuesday, 29 January 2013 8:45 AM
> To: Marcin Wojnarski
> Cc: goal at eprints.org
> Subject: [GOAL] Re: Is $99 per article realistic and compatible with  
> profits
> - or too high a price?
>
> On 2013-01-28, at 12:29 PM, Marcin Wojnarski wrote:
>
> "Commercial use" is a broad and vague term. For example, displaying  
> a paper
> on a website together with advertisements - is this commercial use  
> or not? I
> think most people hope for add-on services to flourish on top of CC-BY
> literature, they rather don't expect the papers to be directly re- 
> sold.
>
> Question: are you saying that allowing any third party to make use  
> of a
> scholar's work to advertise their own products and/or to sell their
> advertising services is one of the reasons people are advocating for  
> CC-BY?
>
> If so, I would suggest that such a use is far more problematic than
> beneficial to scholarship, and I doubt very much that scholars who  
> prefer to
> publish their work as open access are keen to permit such uses. Even  
> if this
> were desirable, such a practice is also questionable with CC-BY, as  
> this
> grants commercial rights but retains the author's moral rights.
>
> best,
>
> Heather Morrison
>
>
>
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