Many thanks to Stevan Harnad for the unsolicited publicity! Anyone who is
interested in actually reading the research study, so as to discover what it
was attempting to do, what questions were actually asked, and what the
conclusions were, is very welcome to order a copy (100 pounds or 200 dollars
to non-members of ALPSP) - just contact me.
In brief, our primary aim was to understand the motivations and concerns of
authors in the current journal publishing situation. It was clear that the
standing of the journals in which they publish is of key importance - more
so than price or absence of page charges; this would seem to indicate that,
on its own, an 'author pays' model is unlikely to be attractive. What it
would need, I feel (and I'm actually very attracted by the model) is for the
publisher of a large, highly rated, successful journal to take the plunge -
new journals will always struggle initially, regardless of their economic
model.
We did ask some more open questions at the end about authors' (a)
expectations and (b) wishes for future journal publishing. Interestingly,
very few predicted, or hoped for, a radically different model from the
present one. So if we want it to happen, we clearly have some way to go
with authors as well as publishers!
Sally
Sally Morris, Secretary-General
Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers
South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 3UU, UK
Phone: 01903 871686 Fax: 01903 871457 E-mail:
alpsp_at_morris-assocs.demon.co.uk
ALPSP Website
http://www.alpsp.org.uk
Received on Wed Feb 10 1999 - 19:17:43 GMT