Re: Institutional Journal Costs in an Open Access Environment

[Mark Funk <mefunk@med.cornell.edu>]

Heather-

Thanks for your comments about this. I was also reminded, when 
reading Phil Davis' comments, about income tax. In the United 
States, income tax is generally progressive. From Wikipedia: A 
progressive tax, or graduated tax, is a tax that is larger as a 
percentage of income for those with larger incomes. The term 
"progressive tax" is usually applied in reference to income 
taxes, where people with more income pay a higher percentage of 
it in taxes.

While the rich may object to progressive income tax (and they 
do!), it does help those who have a harder time just paying for 
the essentials of living. This seems to me to also be appropriate 
for large research institutions.

Mark

> ------------------------------
> From: Heather Morrison <heatherm@eln.bc.ca>
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Subject: Institutional Journal Costs in an Open Access Environment
> Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2006 18:37:15 EDT
>
> There are two problems with this argument, in my view.
>
> First, it seems that we are assuming that it would not be fair 
> for universities with intensive research production to pay a 
> higher share of the costs of scholarly communication.
>
> Why shouldn't they pay more, though?  Can we not assume that the 
> research intensive university receives a higher portion of 
> research funding than the less-research-intensive university?
--
Mark Funk
Head, Collection Development
Weill Cornell Medical Library
New York, NY 10021
mefunk@med.cornell.edu