From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2013 18:07:31 -0400

"I'm afraid the societies are hiring consultants"--

Gosh, Christina, that's a broad brush!  But you should know that
sometimes consultants are hired precisely to keep a society program
independent and even to remove a program from the clutches of a
commercial publisher.

On the other hand, if libraries had hired "consultants" 15 years ago,
they might have done more in the way of strategic planning and not
adopted policies that have abetted the growth of the largest
publishers.

(Are consultants a race, like Klingons or Romulans?)

Joe Esposito


On Mon, Aug 5, 2013 at 5:23 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: "Pikas, Christina K." <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2013 09:06:46 -0400
>
> I have to say that I have been an advocate of societies outsourcing a
> lot of their publishing. I've seen societies do a very poor job of
> publishing journals and hiring vendors who aren't even familiar with
> standard/routine features of scholarly publishing (e.g., one vendor a
> society hired didn't know anything about IP authentication). If the
> society is incompetent at publishing then they should look for expert
> help and that will cost something. Just throwing up a content
> management system with articles in it isn't enough!
>
> With that said, these price increases seem egregious. I'm particularly
> disappointed that this is coming from APS, a society that used to talk
> about only charging enough to cover publication with a little buffer
> in case of emergency. I'm afraid the societies are hiring consultants
> and new employees from the major for-profit publishers and are
> adopting many of their attitudes.
>
> Christina Pikas
> (speaking only for myself and not my institution)