If a private survey were done on what librarians think of journal publishers, I predict that the most common response would be something along the lines of ‘they are all money-grabbing exploiters of public intellectual property’. A public survey might garner slightly more polite responses, but you get the point. Many librarians, especially in the academic sector, seem to regard commercial journal publishers as an enemy who should be done away with as quickly as possible. Well, it is quite all right to let off steam when frustrated, and everyone would expect the serials librarian to gripe about journal price increases, but this becomes dangerous when senior managers talk nonsense about commercial publishers in public meetings, and that’s what I’ve been hearing lately.
In the rest of his opinion piece, however, Calvert suggests a couple of ways in which libraries and publishers should work together, which is a very different thing from showing that any criticisms are unwarranted.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/15/2003 11:53:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
