On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 1:56 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/academic-publishers-murd...
That's an interesting article (not read the other ones yet). I actually got a job offer from an academic publisher around 11 years ago (just before Wikipedia started). I sometimes wonder what might have happened if I'd taken that job instead of the one I took instead. I'd probably have a different outlook on this whole debate. Though having done some editing I am sympathetic to the fact that publishing companies need to make some money to pay those that work for them (probably through a delayed release after a few years), but clearly not that much. Having said that, I'm sure I read that a few years ago there was a big contraction in the journals publishing industry, or am I imagining that? The whole "digitise a back-catalogue or archive and make money out of it" thing is not that uncommon, actually. Museums and libraries and archives sometimes try and do that as well (with varying degrees of success). Libraries are another matter again. It depends whether you are after current issues or older issues. The former is harder with budget cuts, but the latter (older issues) can usually be ordered up from somewhere. Online access is more convenient, but not always necessary. Maybe one day people will be surprised that books were ever offline and not availble online 24/7 from the moment of publication.
Carcharoth