Scientific literature ought to be free or at least sold at the
cost of its distribution. Publishers in the science field for profit
are like zombies--they are dead but they are still walking around.
There is a law about to be introduced in the California
Legislature that will require courses in state universities
to use open access textbooks(whenever possible).
This is an admirable trend. Textbook publishing has become
a scam, and so has journal publishing to a remarkable extent.
They charge in many cases what the traffic will bear.
I say this having written several book published in the old way
and a whole lot of regular journal articles in journals with high
subscription rates, over the years. That was the old
way. But it is about to end, and good riddance to my mind.
Some books cost money to make. If you want a beautiful art book,
expect to pay for it. But there is no excuse for a calculus textbook
to cost anything much, and even less excuse for old journal articles
to cost anything at all.
If it is in a library, it ought to be free on line unless it is new
production(it does cost something to run a peer
reviewed journal, but it costs a lot less than publishers tend to charge.
And I know because I am an editor of a journal--and a good one--that
publishes things at cost, a nonprofit but successful operation.
Our subscription rate is a fraction of the commercial scientific journal
rates--but our journal is just as good, has the same kind of refereeing
processes and the same kind of referees, etc.)
The on line revolution may not be all good--there is a lot of junk
information on the web and it is not always easy for people to figure out
that it is junk, but it
will be good for science in the long run.
It is ALREADY being good for
science. Check out
Project Euclid to see what I mean
http://projecteuclid.org/DPubS?Service=UI&version=1.0&verb=Display&handle=euclid&page=browse
Not everything there is open access so far--far from it.
But soon it will be because competition will make it so.
And this can be made to happen by the authors. Boycott sending your
stuff to journals that do not have open access or at least cheap
subscription rates.
What conceivable excuse is there for anyone to be making a profit
on the distribution of scientific information? None at all.
Robert
On Wed, 11 Jan 2012, Eric Carmichel wrote:
Hello Fons,
Your query ("what motivates authors to make their work available in this way") made me
think of my own situation. Perhaps publishing in peer-reviewed journals is analogous to receiving
Merit Badges in Scouts: In some instances, it?s how one gets rated, noticed, or makes it to the
next level. It seems (at least in the U.S.) that professors are pressured to publish in
professional journals. As this applies to me, I was told (as a Master?s student) that I?d need at
least a few peer-reviewed articles under my belt in order to get into a doctoral program of study.
There?s a catch, of course, because it?s difficult to do research in hearing science without
university affiliation. At present, I?m pursuing research while, at the same time, on the lookout
for a doctoral advisor. Doing good deeds and being committed to purposeful work is great, but I
suppose I'm still deficient when it comes to those "Merit Badges."
I have written a couple of noteworthy articles regarding hearing, but only one appeared in a
"peer-reviewed" journal. An earlier article was intended for a much broader (albeit layman)
readership, and it reached people who could truly benefit from the information contained within the
article. Specifically, the article was about hearing protection and muzzle blasts, and it appeared in
Outdoor Life magazine. Submitting the same article to, for example, Audiology, might have earned
Brownie points needed for admission to grad school, but submitting an article regarding hearing
protection to hearing scientists / audiologists is simply preaching to the choir. I was happy that the
article found favor with a large readership even though it didn't appear in a "professional"
journal. A second article regarding binaural electronic hearing protectors found its way to Noise &
Health (which IS peer-reviewed), and I was grateful that they accepted it for publication. I
had previously submitted the article to JASA, and had received a very kind
rejection letter. Some magazines will accept or reject articles because of
reader interest or current research trends. The Journal of the Audio
Engineering Society is known for publishing articles on Ambisonics, but maybe
they rejected a series of related articles, and Acta Acustica united with
Acustica picked them up (?). Once copyrighted, I imagine that the publisher has
exclusive rights to the manuscript, even in derivative form. But how they can
justify high prices certainly eludes me. Downloading single articles from JASA
is kind-of pricey, too. Subscription to AES?s library is reasonable, and you
wonder why others aren?t the same. Furthermore, the AES offers anthologies that
include hard-to-find articles.
I wished I could simply upload research and schematic diagrams to my website
and make them available for good will to all researchers. But unless something
gets published in a professional journal, it may be (mis)construed as
?amateurish? or ?unimportant? to those in academia. How unfortunate this is!
Please know that I am grateful to all of you who have freely shared you
insights, expertise, and wisdom, whether you?re an audio professional with
years of experience or a hobbyist with personal opinions on music and
Ambisonics.
Sincerely,
Eric
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