Philip Aldrick, Reed boss denies 'profiteering', Daily Telegraph, August 6, 2004. Excerpt: "Reed, the world's largest publisher of scientific journals, has been accused of profiteering from knowledge. In particular, critics have drawn attention to the company's 34pc operating margin. Reformers want to transform the current 'subscriber pays' model of publishing research into an 'author pays' model, where access is free to all. Sir Crispin defended the existing system of subscriptions Reed charges for its 1,800 medical journals. Speaking at yesterday's interim results, he said: 'Once you get into the issue and see what's truly going on, you realise the model is working very well. Today, through his laptop, a scientist can access 3.5 miles of research articles and do in an hour what would have taken a week before. That would not have happened if we hadn't been able to invest and you didn't have a profitable industry. None of it would have happened under author pays.' "
(PS: On the contrary, the purpose of the upfront funding model --confusingly called the 'author pays' model-- is to cover a journal's expenses in reviewing and publishing articles. So if we had been using it from the start, then all production costs would have been covered and all the articles would be OA, a much better outcome than we see today with the toll-access Elsevier corpus. OA publishers don't need huge profits to digitize their back runs; they are already digital. As for access to the Elsevier corpus through a 'laptop', no one denies that those who pay will have access. The point is to find a way to cover costs without creating access barriers.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 8/06/2004 10:40:00 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.
