RE: NFP publishing

["Mcsean, Tony (ELS)" <T.Mcsean@elsevier.com>]

Richard's opinion that professional and learned societies should 
support publishing rather than live off it is widely held and 
forms the basis for many enjoyable chicken-and-egg arguments 
which don't need incubating here.

The point I would like to make is that throughout the world the 
tide of affairs seems to be running strongly against professional 
membership societies.  Even with significant nett income from 
commercial activities, many well-known associations are in 
serious financial straits and without non-subscription income 
would simply cease to exist in their present form.

I speak with personal experience.  In my 16 years as the British 
Medical Association's library director the library thrived on the 
plopughed-back profits of the BMJ Group.  The UK's national LIS 
professional association, Cilip, (whose council I chair)is in 
serious financial trouble.  EAHIL (a small-scale European 
equivalent of MLA, on whose board I've served since 1993) has 
tackled its murky financial future by abolishing subscriptions, 
going virtual and managing on voluntary labour plus small amounts 
raised from commercial sponsorship and a levy on annual 
conference registrations. I'm sure other list members could 
recount similar tales in their own professional fields.

My point is, eventually, that saying professional associations 
should subsidise scholarly publishing is like saying we should 
start our journey from somewhere other than where we are.

Richard's final, nicely turned point about FP and NFP "breathing 
together" is an echo of a point made at a seminar last week by 
Maurice Long, a man of long experience in FP and NFP publishing 
and now one of the engines of the HINARI/AGORA programme.  He 
said that in his long experience you could not get a cigarette 
paper between their operations and priorities, and for what it's 
worth my own perception is much the same.

Tony

Tony McSean
Director of Library Relations
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London WC1X 8RR

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