What about a more
equitable model of compensation to control market forces? Scientists get paid
to publish in the popular science world. Why not by professional journals?
Prestige and career advancement are not enough of a reward. Do you
see novelists paying publishers and Broadway stars paying producers? Scientists
already do the most critical work for the commercial journals, the research,
writing, and reviews. Perhaps universities could bargain with commercials,
insisting on compensation for contributions by faculty, a price break, or
no-deal.
Is there some reason the
scientific community wants to keep personal financial reward out of the
professional publication realm? Would it be corrupting?
-
SY
Sylvia Hope
Ornithology & Mammalogy
California Academy of Sciences
875 Howard St.
San Francisco, CA 94103
(415) 321-8379
shope@calacademy.org
-----Original Message-----
From: paleonet-owner@nhm.ac.uk
[mailto:paleonet-owner@nhm.ac.uk] On Behalf
Of Jere H. Lipps
Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2005
11:41 PM
To: paleonet@nhm.ac.uk;
paleonet@nhm.ac.uk
Subject: paleonet The threat of
the Publishing Crises to Paleontology and to the Commercial Publishers
themselves
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