From: Anthony Watkinson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 7 Apr 2013 11:56:39 +0100

I have been away and only just seen this David. Yes of course you are being
mischievous and yes it is a fair point and yes reprint revenue rarely goes
to authors. As far as I can remember I have never published a journal where
a share of this income goes to authors but it does quite frequently go to
learned society owners. It is usually part of the partnership deal.

However as you know from your time in publishing that publishers do take a
lot of interest in what academics want because they did think they were
dependent on the views of academics as authors. If authors as editors,
reviewers or contributors rejected subscription based journals the journals
would fold. The assumption was (as you will recall) that academics would
vote by taking their articles elsewhere - to open access journals. Now they
have realised that they are in large part dependent on funders of research.
The funders of research know what they do is right (listen to Wellcome
speakers) and they could not care less whether the people who do the
research they fund want. They hold the money.

Anthony

-----Original Message-----
From: David Prosser <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2013 22:44:31 +0100

As Anthony suspects, I was being a little mischievous.  But what interests
me is that a publisher should ask authors for their views on the potential
exploitation of their work for commercial gain, without asking for their
views on the actual exploitation that is already taking place, managed by
the publisher.  And Taylor & Francis say that the results of the survey have
influenced their licensing decisions - so they have gone for a non-commecial
license for open access papers as authors don't like commercial exploitation
while continuing to retain the right to commercially exploit papers from
authors who sign over copyright.  This looks like authors are being listened
to slightly selectively.

(As an aside, it is one of the many oddities of the journal publishing
market that reprint sales are viewed (almost always) as exclusively
publisher revenues and not author revenues.)

David



On 2 Apr 2013, at 00:10, LIBLICENSE wrote:

From: Anthony Watkinson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2013 21:58:02 +0100

From what I know of David's career in publishing, I do not imagine he has
ever had to make a decision to give up a source of income which for some
publishers ( probably not T&F ) is important for some journals, and it is a
long time since I might have been involved.

I wonder what he would do? Perhaps he could tell us - hypothetically of
course. What to me is interesting is the lack of discussion about the
complete removal of a source of income to the the scholarly communication
process from big pharma (users rather than contributors of papers) under an
OA scenario. Freeloading or free riding used to be much discussed.

Anthony