David Goodman wrote:
The priority purchase in the sciences is very clear: I/ The standard modern enclyclopedias and other refereneces works: Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of chemistry and chemical technology, Walker's Mammals of the World, Encyclopedia of Life Sciences, and so on. Most, but not quite all, are already available in digital format. Some, such as ELS, do not actually make a profit. Almost all are esigned for the advancedd undergraduate level. The difficulty would not be that of acquiring them, but of keeping them up to date.
Keeping things up to date would be a different sort of challenge. Maybe that is still better done by the original publisher. Agressive as my copyright views may be I still recognize that these publishers need to maintain some usefulness. If the book is readily available from the publisher we don't need to have it too. Maintaining good relations with publishers will be important. As long as we don't interfere with their exclusive rights to publish and sell their works they will be more willing to pass us the material that they can no longer reprint profitably, but which will still be of interest to a limited number of scholars.
III/ Scientific American tho perhaps a little below our level, it is exceptionally well and consistently edited/rewritten, and has had major financial difficulties in the past.
The first series of 14 volumes (1845-1859) is already available on CD. Until WWI it did a fantastic job of reporting on current patents, but all of these issues are already in the public domain. The early volumes of "Popular Science" were a lot more informative and well written than the current version.
V/ Some of the major review and current awareness journals: Accounts of Chemical Research, Nature reviews in, etc. These are very up to date, and while some of the content is of the graduate level, much should be accessible. I wouldn't suggest getting them all. I would suggest instead selective licensing of content.
But I am not sure it would necessarily be the best approach to incorporate the material here, rather than to make the publications themselves open access.
With journals like this that are in continuing operation the difficulty is in scanning and maintaining an accessible online archive of the older issues. They could be happy to have someone else do this for them.
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