From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2013 12:56:19 -0500

I think the researchers at places like Bell Labs and Xerox Park in the
past would be surprised to learn that "research has no other business
plan than subsidies" from government!

Sandy Thatcher


> From: "Guédon Jean-Claude" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:42:04 -0400
>
> There are indeed important differences between OA economic regimes on
> the Gold road (the Green road is entirely different in this regard as
> it is fully subsidized by institutions that support depositories).
> However, Jo Esposito's elaboration, after starting in the right
> direction, veers off into irrelevance questions for the issue at hand:
> while it is true that knowing who foots the bill is important, the
> embargo issue refers to a second order issue at best, the
> commercialization aspect is a third order issue, etc.
>
> Remember the basic rules:
>
> 1. Research, viewed in its entirety, necessarily includes a publishing
> phase; therefore, publishing is an integral part of research;
>
> 2. Research (as distinguished from development), i.e. fundamental
> research, is financed in great majority by governments, even in the
> USA;
>
> 3. Research has no other business plan than subsidies. In other words,
> although it has been financially viable for several centuries, it has
> never been sustainable in the business sense of the word.
>
> Conclusion:
>
> 1. Do not ask of scientific publishing to be more sustainable than research;
>
> 2. Support all scientific publishing by public subsidies;
>
> 3. Place all scientific publishing on an internationalized system of
> subsidies to ensure editorial autonomy.
>
> Any system of OA publishing that is not free to readers and to
> authors, and that does not allow re-use, mixing, redistribution, etc.,
> automatically recreates the very forms of discrimination that OA is
> supposed to remove.
>
> Jean-Claude Guédon