Re: <nettime> some more nuanced thoughts on SWARTZ

[John Hopkins <jhopkins@neoscenes.net>]

> Subscription rates are extremely high, and increasing, for high profile
> journals - which are mostly paid by libraries. The proceeds generally do
> not return to the author, they go entirely to the publisher. So the
> question is: How much should go to publisher versus author?
>       Paid by library = Paid to author + Publisher overhead
> Is the university library paying for content or for access?

Was it in nettime that someone pointed to an essay describing a rather elegant 
(but very utopian) solution to this conundrum.  unfortunately I don't have the 
reference, but the gist was that a university would quit all journal 
subscriptions and instead use the money to have an in-house editorial/production 
staff that will take content generated by the university and self-publish, 
archive, and make available all of it for free to the wider community (taxpayers 
for public institutions, and so on).  obviously this would have to include 
'everyone' all at once, and there would develop a similar power hierarchy driven 
by elite institutions (with enormous endowments), but it seemed like a nice idea 
when I read it...

jh


Oh, and a PS rather than to send another note -- slightly off-topic, but in 
Light of the Norwegian irruption -- I wrote some notes about my encounters with 
neo-Nazi sympathies when I lived in Iceland in the 1990s: 
http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/archives/43169

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
John Hopkins
exploring the patterns and flows
of cosmological power @
http://neoscenes.net/
http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


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