RE: On profit and speculative tipping points

["Sally Morris \(Morris Associates\)" <sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk>]

Yes, the beneficiaries of scholarly publishing - authors and 
readers - would be worse off without commercial publishers, in my 
opinion.  Commercial publishers grew up after the 2nd World War 
to fill the vacuum which learned societies and other nonprofit 
publishers were unable to fill.  Nonprofits (at least in the case 
of societies) are constrained by the boundaries of their subject 
area - new areas, such as interdisciplinary/crossover or 
'twigging' fields, cannot easily be covered by them.  They are 
also less likely to have the resources (or indeed the ability to 
undertake risk) to launch new journals, which is always a 
speculative venture.  And indeed many of the significant new 
departures which have been made in research publishing - 
electronic publishing itself, for example - were initially 
pioneered by commercial publishers with their deeper pockets.

And while Sandy is right that nonprofits might stick with less 
(or un-) profitable publishing for longer than commercial 
companies would be willing (or allowed by their shareholders) to 
do -- given that it is part of their mission -- even they could 
not do so indefinitely.  And while they did continue, as has been 
pointed out before on this list, their ability to support other 
activities of value to the community - subsidizing conferences 
and other meetings, providing bursaries to attend their own and 
other meetings, providing prizes and awards, funding research, 
and carrying out both professional and school-level educational 
activities, for example - would be impaired.  No one is saying 
that it is a given that such activities should be funded in 
future out of library subscriptions - but we do all have to 
recognize that they would be a casualty of reduced society 
publishing profits.

Sally Morris
Email:  sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk

-----Original Message-----
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Heather Morrison
Sent: 28 September 2007 04:23
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: On profit and speculative tipping points

Sandy Thatcher wrote, in respect to a speculative "tipping point" 
in which the STM industry would simply abandon scholarly 
publishing:

"it is not a matter of whether the STM business could be run 
profitably with NIH-type restrictions in place, but instead the 
expectations the companies most invested in this business have 
about profit margins and their willingness to continue in the 
business at a lower level of profit when their funds might be 
redirected to more profitable uses elsewhere"

To clarify, Sandy, are you saying that the concern is not with 
maintaining costs, or even profitability, with a mandatory NIH 
Public Access policy, but rather that these highly profitable 
businesses might suddenly lose interest at the prospect of LOWER 
PROFITS, and abandon the business, suddenly, collectively and 
entirely?

Are you saying that this would be a bad thing?  It seems to me 
that if, as you say, "Since the commercial companies do not have 
a "mission" to serve scholarship" and might just abandon 
scholarship at the mere thought of making less money - wouldn't 
scholarly publishing be more stable without them?

Sandy's original post:

http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/ListArchives/0709/msg00085.html

Any opinion expressed in this e-mail is that of the author alone, and
does not reflect the opinion or policy of BC Electronic Library
Network or Simon Fraser University Library.

Heather Morrison, MLIS
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com