I have no argument with you, Adam, except that we'd still
have
bills to pay in an OA environment, and without much prospect
of
deriving income from advertising, we'd have to rely on fees
from
authors or their institutions, which in the humanities are
so far
very scarce.
Sandy Thatcher
Penn State University Press
>I remember once trying to read the article in which
Godel proved
>his incompleteness theorem. I perservered but my
understanding
>did not carry me through....If you look at scholarly
publishing
>in the manner of an estate agent it does not appear to
be very
>promising terrain. The really good stuff may be almost
>incomprehensible. Not enough eyeballs and some of them
are on
>very thin stipends with low disposable income.
>
>But this really isnt the point. The value of scholarly
>publications is clearly not to be measured in the terms
of the
>Google ads the page might transact, nor indeed in terms
of the
>subscription income through which it may be currently
supported.
>What matters is its accessiblity and its citeability,
and its in
>those areas that the Open Access argument wins the day.
>
>To put it rather crudely: the value of the
Godel-watching
>eyeballs is not to be measured in terms of the ads which
might
>appear on the Godel-content pages. The value for Google
is in
>the overall intentional record and reading/seeking
pattern of
>the web user. From that standpoint the value of the
shape and
>patterns of research and scholalry activity may be
really very
>high and they may be realised in ways which we find it
hard to
>conceive. Google surely knows this and that is one
reason why it
>has made its big commitment to Google Book Search.
>
>There may be more value in openness than in the
transaction
>where the page which meets the eyeball.
>
>Adam
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