Response to Faculty input message

>From: Robert Michaelson 
>Subject:      Re: The Serials Crisis in the Age of Electronic Access
>To: CHMINF-L@LISTSERV.INDIANA.EDU
>
>At 10:45 AM 5/8/97 CST, Ken Rouse wrote:
>>This *lengthy* editorial also appeared in the SERIALS PRICING
>>NEWSLETTER, which is also a more normal venue for this sort of
>>thing.  I am submitting it to this list in hopes that some chemists
>>will read it and respond.  Basically, I am arguing that if those
>>who produce scientific literature, e.g., chemists, do not take the
>>lead in finding a solution to the problem of horrifically overpriced
>>commercial journals, the so called "serials crisis" is likely to
>>have a history as long as the "troubles in Ireland." Of course,
>>if you can't stand the thought of reading another diatribe on this
>>issue, please use the delete key.
>>
>
>To save space I've deleted Ken's article but it is available at
>http://sunsite.unc.edu/reference/prices/1997/PRIC177.HTML
>
>I very much enjoyed Ken's article and agree with all of his "rants",
>and then some!  I'm hesitant to endorse his "give faculty the money"
>solution since in centralized libraries such as Northwestern's there
>is no way to assign proprietorship to many titles -- lots of them
>are used just as much by chemical engineers or by physicists as by
>chemists.  I'd like to point out a couple of other approaches, long-
>term and by no means certain, but worthy of consideration.
>
> -- Prof. Rob Kirby of the U Cal Berkeley Mathematics Department is
>    circulating a letter to colleagues at leading universities in
>    the field, asking them to refuse to publish in the highest-priced
>    journals, refuse to serve on their editorial boards, refuse to
>    referee for them, and when asked to do so to pressure the publishers
>    to lower their prices.
>
> -- At a recent Caltech conference on scholarly communication, it was
>    suggested that there should be a complete change in the scholarly
>    communication process.  Papers should be published on Internet sites
>    with "certification" by the site to replace refereeing/editing.
>    Researchers' institutions would pay for this certification (perhaps
>    $50 - $150/paper) -- once a paper was certified it would be available
>    on the net *at no charge* to everyone. Some possible benefits:
>        In the humanities, publication is currently limited by the number
>        of sources and the amount they publish.  On the Internet there are
>        no particular reasons to limit the amount published; any good paper
>        could find an outlet.
>
>        In the sciences, we are being killed by the price increases Ken
>        discusses.  Free access wouldn't put a burden on libraries, it
>        would pressure traditional publishers to lower prices, and it would
>        insure that the scholarly production of scientists would be available
>        to everyone, everywhere.  An additional benefit could be that the
>        per-paper certification charge would tend to make institutions
>        pressure scientists into consolidating papers, reversing the trend of
>        the past forty years to produce the "least publishable unit" and
>        generate as long a publications list as possible.
>
>     Of course the Caltech conference proposal would require a change in
>     the culture of the scholarly community to accept this form of publication
>     as prestigious for hiring/tenure/promotion.
>
>
>Bob Michaelson
>Science and Engineering Library
>Northwestern University
>rmichael@nwu.edu
>