Re: copyright under stress

On Thu, Jun 22, 2000, Bert R. Boyce <lsboyc[_at_]lsu.edu> wrote:
>
> On 6/21/2000, Eric Eldred <eldred[_at_]eldritchpress.org> wrote:
> >
> > The Stanford economist Roger Norr has pointed out that if the
> > scholarly journals that are peer-reviewed could be easily copied,
> > then the journals might not have resources to maintain their
> > high quality, considering the high pre-production costs. The ease
> > of copying (in a state of no "scarcity") might tend to drive out
> > the good in favor of the cheap-to-produce. But his point only
> > raises the question whether or not the present business model
> > of producing these journals is efficient, given the inefficiencies
> > of distribution. Perhaps the peer review system needs some better
> > means of funding than purely royalties from distribution. In such
> > cases, one might imagine that it is similar to the farmers trying
> > to get government relief. Most likely farmers, consumers, and
> > the government would all like to have a stable, efficient system,
> > instead of allowing prices to boom and bust, especially for goods
> > that are necessary to life, as for example food. So perhaps
> > electronic journals should have some government funding so as
> > to relieve the burden on libraries, and thereby "promote the
> > progress of science and the useful arts."
>
> I have not read Mr. Norr's piece, but I have to say that it is
> unclear to me just what these high pre-publication costs might
> be. They certainly are not for the cost of the referees or the
> editors who generally work for no compensation and often, though
> certainly not always, have their expenses born by their employers,
> not the journal. The scholarly journal may, or may not, provide
> funds to the unpaid academic editor for travel and postage, but
> rarely are these pre-publication charges material in the costs
> of production. If the exchanges are done electronically there
> are not even postage costs. Any fool can make money running an
> academic journal if he can get the libraries to buy it, or their
> users to demand it. That's why there are so many of them. I
> don't think that it would be possible to devise a less costly
> peer review system than now exists, since all the high cost
> input is on a volunteer basis.

Sorry, I misspelled Roger Noll's name in my haste. His paper is not online at:

     http://www.law.nyu.edu/

nor among his online papers at his page:

     http://www-econ.stanford.edu/faculty/workp/index.html

so I'll have to wing it myself. I think he would agree that much scholarly publishing is not a great expense to the publisher, considering that peer review is often paid for by other means, and sometimes the author even needs to pay the publisher to get the work published. No doubt all these arguments have figured in discussions between publishers and libraries as to why libraries should pay such outrageous prices for these journals, which seemingly could be supported by advertising alone.

However, here the difference might be between a certain fixed amount of overhead in the form of editorial services, and zero amount in the case of the ease of copying and distributing these works without permission on the internet.

my personal experience with publishing with one of the most respected journals, New England Journal of Medicine, is that the editorial prepublishing work is (or should be) very much time consuming and expensive in professional work. it is only because of their reputation for accuracy and thoroughness that the journal can gain readers and establish a 'brand'. thus the journal is rightly concerned about the distribution for free of unauthorized copies.

however, in the case of NEJM, it remains true that the publishers seem to have become corrupted by this stream of money, and a great controversy has erupted as to the editorial direction of the journal, and its connection with other enterprises of the owner, the Massachusetts Medical Society. as in so much of the academic world, the pressure is to make money today, no matter what problems arise with the ethics of doctors owning shares in corporations whose products they evaluate, for example.

still, i believe Noll's point applies. surely every case is a mixed one, while he was referring to the economic abstract, pure case. there have been proposals from washington to set up electronic medical journals online for free, with peer review. i expect the barrier to success will be the claim of journals such as NEJM that this would unfairly take away their capital investment in infrastructure to support the brand. while this may not be entirely demonstrable, still it is a de facto barrier that no amount of logical argument will take away.

i'd like to see the discussion more open, with real facts as to what these costs are, too. maybe the publishers have a good point, maybe they don't.

-- 
"Eric"  Eric Eldred  Eldritch Press
mailto:Eldred[_at_]EldritchPress.org
http://www.eldritchpress.org/EricEldred.vcf