RE: Publishers and the doctrine of Good Works

["David Goodman" <David.Goodman@liu.edu>]

I know that this is not exactly what Joe meant, but:

For a publisher, OA is indeed a detraction, and they should get 
it done and over with, so they can concentrate on improving good 
journals.

Similarly for a library. Our real job is not to negotiate 
contracts or arrange for complicated means of access, or deal 
with moving the money around within a university. It's helping 
the users find what they need.

At present, that means primarily helping them find a place where 
they can get to a copy of an article. We've gotten skilled at it, 
but we should instead be helping more users figure out what they 
need, and then getting it should be trivial.

We are prepared to deal with publishers efforts to push their 
titles, even at the expense of others. That's what selectors do. 
We resent having to deal with the same publisher's efforts to 
restrict dissemination of his titles.

Dr. David Goodman = "we" Associate Professor Palmer School of 
Library and Information Science Long Island University

dgoodman@liu.edu
dgoodman@princeton.edu


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu on behalf of Joseph Esposito
Sent: Wed 7/19/2006 8:26 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: Publishers and the doctrine of Good Works

Peter, I am sure you are accurately describing your own view, but 
I must say I do not believe your remarks are representative of 
publishers.  Or if they are, people have been lying to me.  OF 
COURSE, publishers are trying to restrain the growth of other 
journals.  That is their job, to outfox the competition.  To put 
this another way, if they were not doing this, they would be 
fired.  You can't have it both ways; you can't send Jeff Skilling 
and Ken Lay to jail (or worse) on one hand for abusing 
shareholders and then turn around and say that the management of 
a company should embrace a free, open, and diverse market, which 
is not in the interest of their shareholders.  As John D. 
Rockefeller noted, companies wish to avoid "ruinous competition." 
It is simply not true that "we all want more access to 
information."  An economic enterprise has narrow aims; if it 
changes the world for the better, it is because it profits from 
it.  I love capitalism, but let's not get sentimental about it. 
It is what it is:  a vibrant, creative force that has a limited 
view of the world.  To get a complete view we need a pluralistic 
environment.

And, yes, I agree that the less formal kinds of OA can not give 
us the equivalent of the New England Journal of Medicine, nor 
have I ever even hinted that I felt otherwise.  OA is mostly a 
distraction.

Joe Esposito