From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2012 15:08:27 -0700

I don't find the comparisons between publishing and chocolate to be
very convincing either.  For years Jason Epstein used to compare
publishing to the economic scale of ham or something like that.   But
he wasn't trying to persuade anyone that the number is irrelevant.
His point was that publishing is a niche business, which it is.

The most persuasive arguments are the facts.  People buy things that
they think are useful. They don't buy things that they don't think are
useful.  To say that libraries buy things that they don't think are
useful is a libel.  People like that little niche business called
publishing, and that's why they pay for it.

Conversely, how many people would pay to use an institutional
repository?  I was involved with such a project a while back.  No
takers.

Joe Esposito

On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 1:57 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> From: Frederick Friend <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2012 10:03:28 +0100
>
> I am not convinced by the comparison between the STM publishing
> industry and the chocolate or Christmas pudding industries. Chocolate
> or Christmas puddings individuals choose to buy or not to buy out of
> the money in  their own pockets. STM journals are paid for by all
> taxpayers without any say in whether they are purchased or not and
> without any say in the price that is paid. Admittedly the same
> argument applies to other even larger elements of public expenditure -
> such as defence equipment - but defence against aggression is a higher
> priority for taxpayers  than the purchase of journals for which there
> is a potentially viable and cheaper substitute in institutional or
> subject repositories.
>
> Also if I were a publisher I would be wary of using the argument that
> STM publishing is not a really big expenditure from the public purse.
> In an era of financial stringency it is generally the smaller items in
> governments' budgets that are at greater risk of being axed,
> especially if they are not perceived to be as essential as the big
> items like health or defence.
>
> Fred Friend
> http://www.friendofopenaccess.org.uk