At 04:06 PM 10/7/2002 +0100, you wrote:
>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
Jan: Good point, well put. I made a similar point in my June piece for
BMC's _Journal of Biology_: "If these benefits [of open access] were
expensive to produce, they would nevertheless be worth paying for - but it
turns out that open access can cost much less than traditional forms of
dissemination...."
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/jbiol.htm
Best wishes,
Peter
----------
Peter Suber, Professor of Philosophy
Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana, 47374
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Received on Tue Oct 08 2002 - 02:20:18 BST