---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 02 Oct 1998 09:13:42 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Thomas J. Walker" <tjw@GNV.IFAS.UFL.EDU>
Subject: Re: Article: Free Internet Access to Traditional Journals

>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Wed, 23 Sep 1998 22:01:22 -0400
>From: Albert Henderson <NobleStation@COMPUSERVE.COM>
>Subject: Article: Free Internet Access to Traditional Journals (Rob
Atkinson)
>
>on Fri, 18 Sep 1998 Rob Atkinson <atkinson@FNAL.GOV> wrote:
>
>> FYI:  There is an interesting, well thought out article in the
>> September-October 1998 issue of American Scientist, v. 86 no. 5, with title
>> Free Internet Access to Traditional Journals, by Thomas J. Walker.  The
>> author gives a brief history of scholarly publishing vis costs including
>> the serials crisis beginning in the 1970s, the serials crisis Web-style,
>> and continues with an example of a working scheme for cheap digital
>> publishing and free access at a profit.  The piece is library oriented.  I
>> apologize if it has already been brought up here.
>> Available on-line at
>> http://www.sigmaxi.org/amsci/articles/98articles/walkerweb.html
>
>I read the article with interest. It contains many errors including
>claiming that the first journal was published by a society and
>that Federally financed page charges cannot be paid to commercial
>publishers.
>

I understand that who published the first journal is debatable but the
scenario I gave is, in my experience, the most often used. A recent
confirmation of my choice is Schaffner AC. 1994. The future of scientific
journals: lessons from the past. Information Technology and Libraries 3:239ff.

I did not say that Federally financed page charges cannot be paid to
commericial publishers (they can be) but I did say that at the time they
were first permitted (1961) they could not be.  My source is Spilhaus AF Jr.
1982. Page charges. In: CBE Ad Hoc Committee on Economics of Publication,
editors. Economics of scientific journals. Bethesda (MD): Council of
Biological Editors. p 21-27.

>More important, I think that the author is a pawn in universities'
>program of shedding the cost of their libraries. Administrators
>rammed through a major reallocation of university spending based on
>the idea of "resource sharing" and the success of Xerox. They cut
>libraries from 6% to under 3% of university spending. The result
>was the "serials crisis." They never got approvals from faculty
>senates or the research community. Then they tried to blame publishers'
>profits and excessive publishing by researchers. Now, based on the
>Internet, they hope to cut libraries to less than 1%.

I'm for public access to publicly financed research (as are the librarians I
know).

>When the Copyright Act of 1976 was passed, the costs of the science
>journal system were borne as follows according to Donald W. King et al.
>in SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS IN THE UNITED STATES (Dowden Hutchinson, 1981)
>
>         12% Authors
>         14% Publishers
>         10% Libraries and (A&I) secondary organizations
>         64% Users
>
>King's work on the economics of scientific journals was an enormous
>undertaking, financed largely by the National Science Foundation at
>a time when "dissemination" was recognized by science policy as
>important. It gave us benchmarks like the distribution of costs
>described above. I feel this is a key question.

Much has changed since 1976.  (See Fig. 2 in my paper and consider the
Internet and WWW.)

>My understanding of the allocation envisioned by Walker and others
>who like author subsidized publishing and "free" access-not-ownership
>would be:
>
>                        30% authors
>                        70% users
>
>No publishers. No libraries. Probably little discernable difference
>between validated and vanity publications.

This is not in my article and is not what I envision.  What I tried to
communicate in my article is that as long as we have paper publication
(which is in no danger of disappearing immediately) publishers can earn
additional income by selling authors something they want: universal,
permanent access to their refereed work.  I also suggested that when paper
publication ends, researchers and their institutions should find a way to
continue toll-free Web access to research results.

>Albert Henderson, Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY
><70244.1532@compuserve.com>
>
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Thomas J. Walker
Department of Entomology & Nematology
University of Florida, PO Box 110620, Gainesville, FL 32611-0620
E-mail: tjw@gnv.ifas.ufl.edu         FAX: (352)392-0190
Web: http://csssrvr.entnem.ufl.edu/~walker/tjwbib/walker.htm
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