From: Jan Velterop <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2011 08:35:58 +0000

Joe,

I fear we are talking cross-purposes. My frame of reference is
primarily STM journals. In that frame of reference I just don't
recognise your definition of 'distribution' as "actually persuading
people to read something", unless 'something' means literally that.
Sure, publishers try to stimulate downloads, since they help them
making he case to li,rarians that they should renew their
subscriptions and licences. But it's a numbers game, in which
'something' pretty much means 'anything', and the marginal cost of
extra downloads is negligible.

Indeed, the bits on your hard drive are meaningless unless you engage
with them. Researchers do engage with the information they have access
to, and they would like to have even more to engage with, but all this
engaging isn't necessarily in the form of reading nowadays. Perhaps it
can be described as 'meta-reading', but it is more and more about
extracting facts and assertions, collating them with those from a
large number of publications, connecting and relating them, analysing
them, and using the information gleaned as a basis for further
thinking, experimentation, et cetera. Occasionally articles are still
being read linearly, but even then, particularly if they are being
read online (or nowadays also in PDF when the PDF is opened with the
likes of the scientific reader Utopia - free from getutopia.org) as a
starting point for further navigation of information and knowledge.

Human attention is indeed a scarce thing. And that attention is less
and less being attracted by journals per se, let alone their
publishers. It's the connections between facts and information across
a vast array of publications and databases that attracts attention.
Fragmentation of information in all manner of different journals some
of which are accessible and some not is the scourge of many a
scientist. The observation that most articles are being accessed only
after having been found with general search tools such as Google are
testimony to the fact that practically nobody relies anymore on the
choices journals and their publishers make.

The role of a publisher nowadays is to provide the service to a
scientist of having his or her contributions peer reviewed and
subsequently added to the common pool (well, ocean) of knowledge and
information in a standardised, accessible and attributable way. That
role is not satisfactorily played with the encumbrances of the
subscription model.

You are right that the subscription model may be suitable to content
of a certain nature. Magazines – even scientific ones – and the like
come to mind. Nothing wrong with that. For the mainstay of scientific
communication, however, the model is not suitable any longer. Of
course it will amble along for a time. Quite a long time, even.
Inertia is a pretty strong force.

Jan Velterop

On 9 Dec 2011, at 04:34, LIBLICENSE wrote:

> From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2011 21:12:24 -0800
>
> Oh, gosh, Jan, where to begin?  This is just plain wrong.  There is
> nothing "back door" about having a librarian pay for something.  And
> it would be a wonderful world if maximum distribution were possible
> without marginal cost, but in fact there are huge costs to that
> distribution, if by "distribution" you mean that you persuade people
> actually to read something.  Moving bits around costs nothing, and
> presumably this is what you mean, but the bits on my hard drive are
> meaningless unless I engage with them.
>
> We have here the old saw about non-rival goods.  It does not apply to
> media.  Media is not a product but something that must engage human
> attention.  That's a scarce thing.  There is no superabundance of
> information when you take into account that someone has to be thinking
> about the information.
>
> But it really is unfortunate that you insist on making this a binary
> game.  I don't know if I could possibly have been more lavish in my
> admiration for the author-pays model.  It sits side by side with the
> subscription model and other forms of traditional (that is,
> toll-access) publishing.  Who has to choose?  Over time, the different
> economics of these models will influence the nature of the content
> such that you will get different things from subscriptions than you do
> for author-pays.  Is there anything wrong with that?  Why would anyone
> accuse a radio of not being a television?
>
> Joe Esposito
>
> On Wed, Dec 7, 2011 at 8:08 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> From: Jan Velterop <[log in to unmask]>
>> Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2011 13:46:13 +0000
>>
>>
>> Joe, isn't this already happening? And isn't this why a system based
>> on submission fees hasn't successfully emerged yet?
>>
>> The competition (subscription-based journals) are offering free
>> promotions (to authors) all the time. They have found people who pay
>> them through the back door (librarians, paying for subscriptions, as
>> long as it lasts).
>> "In a competitive market you can never be smarter than your stupidest
>> competitor." The words are yours.
>>
>> This discussion is called "Future of the Subscription Model". The
>> fundamental issue here is that the subscription model is simply not
>> suited to an environment where maximum distribution is possible
>> without marginal cost, and what is being distributed is not consumable
>> (in the sense that it disappears if you consume it). In the bible
>> there is a story about 'loaves and fish'. Allegorical (I presume). But
>> scientific information in the internet environment is like the
>> biblical loaves and fish. Albeit not food for the body, but food for
>> thought. Scientific thought.
>>
>> Jan
>>
>> On 7 Dec 2011, at 01:25, LIBLICENSE wrote:
>>
>> There was an earlier comment on this thread (which I lost, alas) to
>> the effect that one way to build an author-pays service is with a fee
>> for submission rather than for publication.  This is a great idea, and
>> in a world without ruinous competition (John D. Rockefeller's phrase),
>> it would work beautifully, as it aligns the cost to authors with the
>> actual cost of delivering the service.  But what happens when your
>> competitor offers a free Christmas promotion?  Of if eLife takes 10
>> years to figure out a business model?  In a competitive market, you
>> can never be smarter than your stupidest competitor, and if that
>> competitor wants to give away the store, I can see your store loaded
>> onto someone else's truck.
>>
>> Joe Esposito