Re: Does More Mean More?

["Joseph J. Esposito" <espositoj@gmail.com>]

Oh, dear.  This is so completely wrongheaded that one does not 
know where to begin.  The number of publications does not rise 
with the amount of research but with the size of the acquisition 
budgets.  As budgets grow, the number (and price) of publications 
increases.  Publishers also actively lobby for larger 
budgets--because they know that the budgets eventually wind up in 
their pockets.  It is not like large consumer markets, where 
money can be moved from one product category to another (you go 
to the mall for a T-shirt and come home with a CD instead).  If 
there were a single research project in any given year, and the 
acquisition budgets around the world were huge, the number of 
publications about that single project would soar until every 
dollar of those budgets was gobbled up.  The crazy truth is that 
institutional budgets create a curously inflexible demand in that 
virtually every penny in such budgets get spent on one thing or 
another.  I would be interested to know how many librarians 
routinely return money to their sponsoring institutions because 
there is nothing worthwhile to spend it on.

But this is to get off track.  I did not say that publishers are 
"the guardians of quantity"; they are the guardians of their 
shareholders' interests and nothing else.  I really don't think 
arguments as to who wears the white hat are very productive.  My 
point was that Open Access has unintended consequences (not that 
that is in itself a reason to oppose OA), one of which is that it 
will create a new need for filters, which will in turn cost 
something for somebody.

The problem is that OA does not solve the very real problems it 
sets out to solve.  It creates other capabilities, some of which 
may be laudable, but the torrent of publications to be sifted and 
sorted and evaluated can only continue to rise as long as the 
incentives to publish are so closely tied to the professional 
advancement of researchers.  And that is why I continue to insist 
that the solution to the crisis in scholarly communications is 
indeed a form of OA, with the condition that researchers 
themselves (not a foundation, not a sponsoring institution) pay 
the freight for publication.  Tie the costs to the beneficiaries 
and the guardians of quantity will emerge.

Joe Esposito

----- Original Message -----
From: "FrederickFriend"
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Sent: Sunday, January 29, 2006 5:09 PM
Subject: Re: Does More Mean More?

It is ironic that publishers are now claiming to be the guardians
of quantity. Since World War 2 the number of journals published
by subscription publishers has increased dramatically. Anyway the
main driver for quantity of publication is not the business model
but the quantity of research undertaken by the academic

Fred Friend
JISC Scholarly Communication Consultant
Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL