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Fwd: Stevan Harnad's opinion on the future of Learned Societies aspubllishers
- To: epc@iucr.org
- Subject: Fwd: Stevan Harnad's opinion on the future of Learned Societies aspubllishers
- From: Pete Strickland <ps@iucr.org>
- Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 11:55:43 +0100
- Organization: IUCr
---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: Stevan Harnad's opinion on the future of Learned Societies as publlishers Date: Sunday 27 June 2004 5:27 am From: mo002 <icsti@DIAL.OLEANE.COM> To: ICSTI-L@DTIC.MIL Well maybe not his own personal opinion but that given on the FAQs on the Eprints site where, let's say, he is influential: "I worry about self-archiving because of what it might do to Learned Societies' future." Learned Societies are potential allies in and beneficiaries of the self- archiving initiative. First, they are us. Whatever is good for research, and for research impact, is therefore also good for Learned Societies. But many of them are also journal publishers, and hence may one day be facing downsizing pains. Unlike commercial publishers, however, their first and last allegiance will of course be to research and researchers, that is, us. We will hear rationalizations about needing the access-toll revenues to fund "good works" such as meetings, scholarships and lobbying. But it will quickly become evident that, on the one hand, some of these good works are not essentials either, and certainly nothing that we would want to sacrifice research impact for; and the subset of these good works that really is essential (e.g., meetings) will prove to be able to fund itself other ways too, rather than needing to be subsidized at the expense of research impact. (Imagine explicitly asking the society membership, once the causal connection between access and impact becomes common knowledge: "Are you willing to continue subsidizing your society's good works with your own lost research impact, by foregoing open-access and letting toll-access continue to decide who can and cannot use your [give-away] research?") Learned Societies (and perhaps also University Presses) are also natural candidates for taking over the serials titles of commercial journal publishers who prefer to discontinue journal operations rather than scale down to just becoming peer-review service providers. No rational deterrent to immediate self-archiving in worries about Learned Societies' future. ------------------------------------------------------- -- Best wishes Peter Strickland Managing Editor IUCr Journals ---------------------------------------------------------------------- IUCr Editorial Office, 5 Abbey Square, Chester CH1 2HU, England Phone: 44 1244 342878 Fax: 44 1244 314888 Email: ps@iucr.org Ftp: ftp.iucr.org WWW: http://journals.iucr.org/ NEWSFLASH: Complete text of all IUCr journals back to 1948 now online! Visit Crystallography Journals Online for more details _______________________________________________ Epc mailing list Epc@iucr.org http://scripts.iucr.org/mailman/listinfo/epc
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