Re: Responses to Walt Crawford's reflections on FOS

From: Jan Velterop <jan_at_biomedcentral.com>
Date: Mon, 7 Oct 2002 16:06:59 +0100

On the issue of spending and money it may be good to point out that even
if exactly the same amount of money were to be spent on a reverse business
model (pay for dissemination rather than for access) as is currently
being spent on subscriptions and access licences in the conventional
model, the benefits of a reverse model would easily be superior, as it
would ensure full open access to anyone, anywhere, which the conventional
model does not. The benefits would be greater for the Have-Nots than for
the Harvards (to use Stevan Harnad's terminology), but even for the
Harvards the benefits of open access are substantial.

The fact that a reverse, open access, model doesn't have to cost nearly as
much as the conventional model (for a start, all costs and efforts to keep
users out could be scrapped), is a welcome side-effect to all but
conventional publishers, but not the crux of the matter, at least not for
scientists and scholars.

Jan Velterop
BioMed Central
Open Access Publishing

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Received on Mon Oct 07 2002 - 16:06:59 BST