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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

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