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