Re: message to liblicense-l

[Johannes Velterop <velteropvonleyden@btinternet.com>]

Joe,

I have to admit that I don't know what the precise definition is 
of 'a lot' (neither do I know what Scrubs is or how you can turn 
it off -- and perhaps we should keep it that way), but I think we 
can safely state that for most articles there are more readers 
than authors (some of the articles in Arxiv, with hundreds of 
authors, may well be exceptions to this). The issue is not so 
much that there are many readers 'out there' for most articles, 
because there are most probably not, but the issue is the 
assumption that all potential 'real' readers are at institutions 
that have a subscription to the articles in question and not 'out 
there' without access.

The Shakespeare quote is very amusing, but isn't the question 
more something like this: "If I pay for an insurance policy, will 
I get an accident?" Precisely because you don't know you take out 
insurance. Precisely because we don't know who can or will read 
specific scientific research articles we ought to have open 
access.

We need to find a way for journals to provide economically 
sustainable open access. The fact that we don't have open access 
is a kind of 'collateral damage' of the traditional subscription 
system. With the internet and its functionalities we can have 
structural and economically feasible open access as soon as we 
have enough political will to redirect the existing money streams 
for scientific literature. Maybe political will is one of those 
spirits that won't come when you call them. You may have a point 
there.

Jan Velterop