From: Anthony Watkinson <[log in to unmask]> Date: Sun, 7 Apr 2013 11:56:39 +0100 I have been away and only just seen this David. Yes of course you are being mischievous and yes it is a fair point and yes reprint revenue rarely goes to authors. As far as I can remember I have never published a journal where a share of this income goes to authors but it does quite frequently go to learned society owners. It is usually part of the partnership deal. However as you know from your time in publishing that publishers do take a lot of interest in what academics want because they did think they were dependent on the views of academics as authors. If authors as editors, reviewers or contributors rejected subscription based journals the journals would fold. The assumption was (as you will recall) that academics would vote by taking their articles elsewhere - to open access journals. Now they have realised that they are in large part dependent on funders of research. The funders of research know what they do is right (listen to Wellcome speakers) and they could not care less whether the people who do the research they fund want. They hold the money. Anthony -----Original Message----- From: David Prosser <[log in to unmask]> Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2013 22:44:31 +0100 As Anthony suspects, I was being a little mischievous. But what interests me is that a publisher should ask authors for their views on the potential exploitation of their work for commercial gain, without asking for their views on the actual exploitation that is already taking place, managed by the publisher. And Taylor & Francis say that the results of the survey have influenced their licensing decisions - so they have gone for a non-commecial license for open access papers as authors don't like commercial exploitation while continuing to retain the right to commercially exploit papers from authors who sign over copyright. This looks like authors are being listened to slightly selectively. (As an aside, it is one of the many oddities of the journal publishing market that reprint sales are viewed (almost always) as exclusively publisher revenues and not author revenues.) David On 2 Apr 2013, at 00:10, LIBLICENSE wrote: From: Anthony Watkinson <[log in to unmask]> Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2013 21:58:02 +0100 From what I know of David's career in publishing, I do not imagine he has ever had to make a decision to give up a source of income which for some publishers ( probably not T&F ) is important for some journals, and it is a long time since I might have been involved. I wonder what he would do? Perhaps he could tell us - hypothetically of course. What to me is interesting is the lack of discussion about the complete removal of a source of income to the the scholarly communication process from big pharma (users rather than contributors of papers) under an OA scenario. Freeloading or free riding used to be much discussed. Anthony