Re: copyright under stress

On Fri, Jun 23, 2000, John Lederer <johnl[_at_]ibm.net> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 22 Jun 2000, Patricia Roshaven <roshaven[_at_]acc.fau.edu> wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, 21 Jun 2000, Eric Eldred <eldred[_at_]eldritchpress.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Tue, Jun 20, 2000, Patricia Roshaven <roshaven[_at_]fau.edu> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > [...]
> > > > This question of scarcity is interesting. Our economic system is
> > > > based on supply and demand. Until the Internet, supply and price
> > > > were set by publishing companies, based on a number of things,
> > > > including price of materials, labor costs, demand, etc. Is this
> > > > "artificial scarcity?" With the coming of the Internet, supply
> > > > is no longer in the hands of publishers. Consumers are suddenly
> > > > saying publishers are capitalistic money-mongers who are setting
> > > > up "artificial scarcity" because unlimited supply is now within
> > > > everyone's reach.
> > >
> > > [...]
> > > 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.
> >
> > [...]
> > Yes -- Improving copyright law does seem more sane than both sides
> > grabbing as much as they can for themselves. Government subsidy
> > does seem like a slippery slope, however. Another possibility would
> > be a consortium of libraries and other interested parties forming a
> > foundation for this purpose.
>
> I undoubtedly do not understand all the ins and outs of peer reviewed
> journals.
>
> I assume that people write scholarly articles for journals not for
> profit, but rather for intangibles such as prestige, the desire to
> share, advancing the profession, self pride, etc.
>
> Surely similar intangibles could be applied to reward the reviewers?
>
> Once one abandoned print (I hear the gasps) the costs of production
> would, I think, be very small.

An analysis of the cost components of academic journal publishing was performed by Hal Varian, Dean of the School of Information Management and Systems at UC Berkeley. He's written (published?) several articles (papers?) on the topic:

  o Future of Electronic Journals
    http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~hal/Papers/publish.html

  o Pricing Electronic Journals:
    http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~hal/Papers/dlib.html

  o Academic Publishing in the Online Era: What Will Be For-Fee and     What will be For-Free?
    http://culturemachine.tees.ac.uk/Articles/art_harn.htm

Though I haven't visited the pieces in a while, IIRC his findings were that costs *other* than printing and distribution contributed the bulk of academic journal expenses. With typical press runs measured in the low thousands, journal expenses are distributed over a relatively small subscriber base.

A collection of Varian's papers may be found here:

   http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~hal/people/hal/papers.html

His website is: http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~hal/

--
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com>         http://www.netcom.com/~kmself/
  Evangelist, Opensales, Inc.                       http://www.opensales.org/
   What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?      Debian GNU/Linux rocks!
     http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/      K5: http://www.kuro5hin.org/
GPG fingerprint: F932 8B25 5FDD 2528 D595  DC61 3847 889F 55F2 B9B0