From: "Guédon Jean-Claude" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 8 May 2013 04:24:51 -0400

Thank you, Sandy, for statistics that actually support my case.

So, less than one third of ARL members are private universities. That
still leaves two thirds of its members supported by public money (all
Canadian universities, including McGill and Toronto are publicly
supported). And if one looks at the amount of public research money
flowing into the budgets of private universities in the US, it cannot
be said that research, even in those institutions, is a private
matter. In fact, these US elite institutions pool a significant
fraction of the total public money devoted to research, and without
that money, they would meet deep, very deep, budget problems.

But one must also look beyond ARL: If Elsevier had to rely exclusively
on the 34 ARL members to support its publishing business, it would be
in deep ... Have you ever considered how much countries like Germany,
Italy, France, etc. pay for their rights to access Elsevier
publications (e.g. through the Couperin consortium in France)? The
same for Brazil, India, etc. All that is public money.

Adding all this up would dwarf the 34 private ARL members. However, to
see this, one must look a little beyond the US borders.

Let us try an experiment: let us have all public money removed from
the revenue stream of Elsevier and its sister publishing houses, just
for one year, and see how their stock will move... :-)

Jean-Claude Guédon
Professeur titulaire
Littérature comparée
Université de Montréal


-----Original Message-----

From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 12:00:17 -0500

A quick answer to your last question is to look at the membership of
the ARL, which excluding its 14 Canadian members (and counting
"state-related" entities like Penn State and Pitt as "public") leaves
36 libraries at private universities that would be buying these
publications.

Sandy Thatcher


> From: "Guédon Jean-Claude" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 14:20:39 -0400
>
> Thank you, Joe, for this friendly form of personal confession. I appreciate...
>
> It had always been clear to me that we disagreed on principles, and
> particularly on the following one:
>
> "My view--my practical view--is that the economic performance of
> mission-based organizations must be addressed without recourse to
> government intervention.  We are on our own, for better or worse."
>
> My response is that one should carefully consider the activities under
> review. Joe's argument, if it were applied to roads and bridges - in
> short, to infrastructures - would sound strange indeed. Governments
> have roles to play at the infrastructural level (at the very least).
> Present remarks by officials of various countries (Obama included)
> about the infrastructural and strategic role of research (and this
> includes the US) reflect the recognition of the fact that, indeed,
> scientific research plays an infrastructural role in the economy.
>
> Publishing, as I have argued many times, is an integral part of the
> research process. As a result, it is the infrastructure of an
> infrastructural activity. How much more infrastructural can you get?
> Moreover, it is only a small fraction of the costs of research. The US
> Government, in ghe last decade had paid out between 130 and 150 plus
> bllion dollars per year on research. This is not small potatoes.
>
> I would also like to point out that the label "mission-based
> organizations" is not a very useful category. The US army is very much
> a mission-based organization...
>
> Finally, I would not express so much frustrations at some publishers
> if they responded to researchers' needs with good services and modest
> profit rates, and not to their stockholders, with enormous profit
> rates. Incidentally, these profit rates are being paid by our
> taxpayers' money. In short, if governments almost everywhere,
> including in the public universities of the US, did not buy these
> publications, who would? And with what money?
>
>
> Jean-Claude Guédon
> Professeur titulaire
> Littérature comparée
> Université de Montréal