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