RE: Raym Crow on publishing coopersatives

["Bobay, Julianne Sullivan" <bobay@indiana.edu>]

I wonder why the very successful History Cooperative was not mentioned
in the article:
http://www.historycooperative.org/

Now in its sixth year, with significant open access content, the 
History Cooperative is a partnership of the two largest scholarly 
societies in history, the University of Illinois Press and the 
National Academy Press. It has grown to 22 important history 
journals of all sizes, including the American Historical Review 
and the Journal of American History. It has achieved, evidently 
quietly, a viable business plan that reaches historians' goals of 
improving access to important research in history and 
simultaneously strengthening the scholarly societies and 
discipline.

I fear that this article failed to differentiate between 
"scholarly publishing" and "scientific scholarly publishing." In 
describing market conditions and scholarly communication issues 
for "scholarly publishers," it describes those conditions as they 
exist in STM, definitely not in many humanities. This might be 
seen as just a matter of semantics, and could easily be remedied 
by stating more clearly the domains being described. To me, 
though, it's indicative of most discussions on this topic, and 
the danger is that it implies that if it's not science it's not 
scholarship, an implication to which humanists rightly object.

Julie Bobay
Interim Director of Scholarly Initiatives
Indiana University Libraries

-----Original Message-----
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Joseph J. Esposito
Sent: Tuesday, September 12, 2006 9:53 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Raym Crow on publishing coopersatives

Interesting -- and unexpected, considering the SPARC connection 
-- piece by Raym Crow in the current issue of FirstMonday 
(http://firstmonday.org) on setting up publishing cooperatives 
designed to make not-for-profit publishers more competitive.  I 
know about a foolish consistency is a hobgoblin, etc., but I am 
puzzled by what could appear to be a policy shift at SPARC away 
from Open Access toward NFP publishing.  Or does Crow not speak 
for SPARC?  Beats me. Anyway, here is the abstract:

"Publishing cooperatives - owned, controlled, and benefiting 
non-profit publishers - would provide an organizational and 
financial structure well suited to balancing society publishers' 
twin imperatives of financial sustainability and mission 
fulfillment. Market challenges and structural constraints often 
render it difficult for small society publishers to compete 
individually. Publishing cooperatives would allow society 
publishers to remain independent while operating collectively to 
overcome both structural and strategic disadvantages and to 
address the inefficiencies in the market for academic journals. 
Publishing cooperatives can provide a scaleable publishing model 
that aligns with the values of the academy while providing a 
practical financial framework capable of sustaining society 
publishing programs."

Joe Esposito