> From: "Marvin Margoshes" <physc...@earthlink.net> > > It is sensible to ask why a reader would pay for information he can get > free. It is equally sensible to ask why an author would pay if there is a > free alternative.
Fair question! Answer: (1) Learned-journal authors, unlike normal authors, publish, not to make money from the sales of their texts, but to maximize the potential impact of their ideas and findings on the course of knowledge by reaching the eyes and hence the minds of all their potebtially interested peers. This strange breed of nontrade authors is even ready to pay for paper offprint charges and postage to maximize that reach. A free online Archive will infinitize their reach; a toll-based one will not. That too must be reckoned in weighing the alternatives. (2) In my proposal authors do not pay from their pockets, but from a small portion of their institution's annual windfall S/L/P savings. In other words, the literature is already completely subsidized by our institutions in the form of S/L/P: Up front page-charges will be a much more economical and an infinitely more effective way of subsidizing it. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Stevan Harnad har...@cogsci.soton.ac.uk Professor of Cognitive Science har...@princeton.edu Department of Electronics and phone: +44 1703 592-582 Computer Science fax: +44 1703 592-865 University of Southampton http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/ Highfield, Southampton http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/ SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/
