[WEB4LIB] Re: AAP and librarians article

[Dan Lester]

Wednesday, February 07, 2001, 8:46:01 AM, you wrote:

RT> What publishers *should* fear us for is stealing their business right 
RT> out from under them. In academe, we have the goods - the faculty who 
RT> write and publish. If we can get our act together and start retaining 
RT> this output in the university by publishing it ourselves (online, for 
RT> free), the commercial publisher has been cut out of the equation.

However, some of the commercial publishers are running on our own
campuses, where they have some power and pressure to apply themselves,
particularly if they're a profit center, as they often are. Some of
the larger university presses are as large and commercial as many of
the STM publishers.

RT> Is 
RT> this happening? You bet it is. Will it grow to the point of putting 
RT> Elsevier out of business? Who knows. But if I were them, *that's* 
RT> what I would fear about libraries.

Absolutely correct.  The real problem for academic publishing, however
is the promotion and tenure committees.  It will take time for the
senior colleagues who control such things to come around giving as
much credence to the Berkeley Economic Review that you start as they
do to Journal of Economics and other respected journals.

dan

-- 
Dan Lester, Data Wrangler  dan at RiverOfData.com
3577 East Pecan, Boise, Idaho  83716-7115 USA
www.riverofdata.com  www.postcard.org  www.gailndan.com