Why do you just assume that all non-profit publishers
"will
charge as much as they can in order to maximize their
revenues"?
I can't speak for society publishers, but this is clearly
not
true for university presses. If it were, the prices of our
journals and books would have risen much faster over the
last
forty years than they have, I assure you. As parts of
universities, presses are driven by other imperatives than
pure
revenue-maximization.
Sandy Thatcher
Penn State Press
>Is it not clear, though, hat price inflation is an
>expectedconsequence of the subscription model?
>
>If the research community hands over ownership/exclusive
>rightsto publishers, it is economically predictable that
>publishers(whether commercial or not-for-profit) will
charge as
>much asthey can in order to maximize their revenues.
Given that
>theacademic community *really* needs access to that
research,
>thereis virtually no upper bound on what publishers with
enough
>marketpower can get away with charging for subscriptions
. The
>naturalsolution to this is surely for the research
community
>*not* togive away the ownership/exclusive rights to the
>research.
>
>Under an open access publishing model, you immediately
have
>amuch more effective market. The customer (the research
>community)can choose the publication service that offers
the
>best value,ensuring that prices are kept down. This kind
>of'substitutability' generally doesn't exist with the
>subscriptionmodel - hence the problem of journal
inflation.
>
>Matt Cockerill
>BioMed Central
>
>
>On 20 Mar 2007, at 22:34, Rick Anderson wrote:
>
>>>For all the many problems of the traditional
model ofuser-pays
>>>publishing, it does one thing very well: it
marriesthe
>>>production of information to the ability to
consume it.In
>>>plain English, this is called living within a
budget.
>>
>>I'm not even convinced that there are many problems
with
>>thetraditional model of user-pays publishing. The
model
>>itselfworks great, as Joe points out. The problem
is with
>>priceinflation. If all journal subscriptions cost
$5 per year,
>>noone would be complaining about the subscription
model.
>>
>>Rick Anderson Dir. of Resource Acquisition
University of
>>Nevada, Reno Libraries rickand unr.edu
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