Thanks to those who thanked me for bringing this matter
together. I didn't do it, however. It came from the
University of California, whose bill to the commercial publishers is in
the millions of dollars/year and is causing the cutting of many books and
other journals. We have to fight to keep paleo, some geology and
systematic journals. I have noticed that if I fail to respond in a
couple of days to the email list sent to me by the librarians (like all I
have to do is read a thousand emails and delete another 2-3 thousand
spam-mails), they will cancel the journals for lack of input.
Trying to get journals restored is almost more trouble than it is
worth.
I see benefits from commercial publication of our journals--they do a
nice job, they do whatever it takes to get the science out, they do it
without additional costs to societies, they do it without additional
burden on scientists who should have better things to do than run
journals, and they do it on-line and, I am sure, will soon be posting
papers on-line as soon as they are reviewed favorably. We pay
profits on everything else we use in our work from Brunton compasses and
rock picks to our vehicles, computers and storage cabinets without
complaints. The difference is that no matter what those benefits
may be or whether or not you agree with me that they are indeed benefits,
the commercial publishers are killing us off. They will
also soon be killing themselves off. So, I should think
that they would want to compromise on this deal somehow. After all,
if our libraries, to say nothing of Ministers of Education, MP's, the
NIH, and a whole host of universities and libraries are rebelling against
them, then they will lose too. No one else will buy their
stuff!
The commercial publishers should work more favorably with us.
Scientists will not go down in this battle, the commercial publishers
will. Science is too valuable to society and we (or our funders)
can merely change our publishing habits. The commercials cannot do
a thing without us. So they better help with this crises and not
fight it, as they are making many enemies at levels higher than working
scientists. NIH, as you now know, has moved to take publication out
of the hands of scientists to avoid the commercialization of the work
they fund. If we were dealing with soft drinks, you bet that
the different purveyors would be far more competitive and be offering us
good deals. The commercials should do the same for publication,
electronic dispersal of our work, and the cheapest prices to our
libraries. But there is no competition. YET. Each publisher invents
a new journal or two in each field and everyone wants it, for fear of
missing out. Of course the commercials offer us editorships and
board memberships, and our deprived egos can't pass on these little
tid-bits and we accept (I can substitute I for we in the previous
sentence). Stop it. We must make change happen, if they
continue to ignore us. In the end, fewer and cheaper commercial
journals might still provide a useful service in many parts of science,
but the continued increasing costs will not be tolerated by the community
at large. So they better change somehow. We could
help them do that.
I'd love to hear from them.
All of this is a complex issue involving economics, stockholders, job
holders, decreased purchasing power, decreasing budgets, and uninformed
scientists. Enough people are outraged that something will
happen. Should be interesting.
Jere