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

[Marcin Wojnarski]

Frank,
This is an interesting point and probably the first solid argument in 
favor of CC-BY-NC that I've heard. But I want to highlight a few 
circumstances that, in my opinion, make this case an exception rather 
than a rule.

1. The book - like most (or all?) academic books published for profit - 
was a _review_ of existing knowledge, not new original research. The 
paper was also a review, and the entire journal "Living Reviews in 
Relativity" is by definition devoted to review papers rather than 
original research.

But: ~99% of other journals and papers are original research not 
reviews. Nobody would even consider them for inclusion in any book, 
because the results contained in them are too fresh, too narrow and not 
yet verified and established in a given discipline.

2. The journal has an exceptionally high impact factor and I guess it's 
one of the leading journals in your discipline.

Again, ~99% of papers out there don't enjoy the benefits of such high 
impact factors and prestige of the journal, which means that their 
chances of being even considered for re-publication anywhere else are 
very low. The primary concern for 99% of authors is not too much 
interest in their papers, but too little interest, too few readers and 
too low dissemination.

Best,
Marcin

On 01/29/2013 10:55 AM, Editor Living Reviews wrote:
> I'd just like to add the point of view of the Living Reviews OA journals
> with an example why we currently argue in favor of CC-BY-NC.
>
> First, since not only Marcin Wojnarski doubts that
>
>> anyone want to pay for a paper which is elsewhere available for free?
> Our long review articles would make perfect (text-)books if anyone could
> sell them without asking for publisher's or the author's permission.
> Example:
>
> The open access review "The Post-Newtonian Approximation for
> Relativistic Compact Binaries" (http://www.livingreviews.org/lrr-2007-2)
> was republished by Oxford UP as a major part of "Equations of Motion in
> General Relativity"
> (http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199584109.001.0001)
> in 2011.
>
> Original price at amazon.com: $98.50 for 156 pages!
>
> Of course, this example does not completely illustrate the possible
> misuse of CC-BY: here, the author agreed to the commercial reprint, and
> the original review was extended by other authors' contributions.
> However, they could have easily sold only the Futamase part as a book.
>
> With CC-BY, the publisher would not even have to ask the authors or
> original OA publisher for reprint permission. Moreover, the authors (who
> usually write time-consuming reviews in addition to their publicly
> funded research) would not financially benefit from this commercial
> reuse in any way. Therefore, our authors would object to Peter
> Murray-Rust, who has
>
>> never met a scientist who has argued for CC-NC over CC-BY.
> In short, in a world where companies collate wikipedia articles and sell
> them on amazon, why wouldn't there be a marked for commercial OA reprints?
>
> (And, if someone wants to sell them, e.g., as book-on-demand, at least
> it should be the OA publishers and authors themselves...)
>
>
> Frank
>
>
>
>


-- 
Marcin Wojnarski, Founder and CEO, TunedIT
http://tunedit.org
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TunedIT - Online Laboratory for Intelligent Algorithms

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