Just a note: In math (my husband is a mathematician), they have several
entirely on-line journals that are peer reviewed but free and an
archive that anyone can submit papers or books to. The publishers
apparently gave some trouble about putting copy written texts there at
first, but now it is not an issue.
Lara Beaty
On Friday, January 28, 2005, at 08:46 AM, Tony Whitson wrote:
> I would add that not only do we write the text, do the reviewing, etc.
> but also that to a considerable extent the time we spend
> in doing this scholarship, as well as the data-generating research,
> is paid for with public funds;
> so the products of our labors could be regarded as public goods.
>
> I think the profession of University Librarians would be more than
> eager to
> help bring about a major change on this, but it needs to be an effort
> by the
> broad academic community.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: David H Kirshner [mailto:dkirsh@lsu.edu]
> Sent: Friday, January 28, 2005 10:10 AM
> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: Re: MCA suscription prices
>
> On the editorial board of Journal for Research in Mathematics
> Education,
> which is published by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics,
> we
> successfully lobbied the NCTM board to provide some free issues to
> university libraries in developing countries. --I don't know if a
> commercial publisher would agree to this sort of give-away. But the
> larger
> question is why do these commercial publishing houses still exist. We
> write
> the text, we provide the editors and reviewers, and in this
> communications
> technologies era we don't much need the publishing houses for
> production or
> distribution. It seems it's only the inertia of habit and tradition
> that
> maintain the status quo. That said, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
> publisher
> of MCA is one of the few that seems not to gouge its customers with
> excessively high prices. Our library routinely pays thousands of
> dollars
> for a single annual subscription to some of the scientific publishers.
> David
>
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