Book People Archive

Re: Scientific publishing corporations get nervous about open access

>if the articles are available for free,  
>why would anyone pay more than a nominal amount for the print  
>journal?

Because researchers aren't paying for it with their own money. Typical
situation: they're working at a university that gets funding from DOE. The
school rakes some obscene percentage off the top of that funding. The
professors expect (for their convenience and for reasons of perceived prestige)
that the school will maintain subscriptions to a large number of journals.
The school sees these DOE contracts as cash cows, and sees the high cost of
print journals as one of the inevitable things they have to do in return
for feeding at the public trough.

>How has Arxiv.org worked out for the paid journals that overlap with  
>the Arxiv subject matter?

I don't think it's had any effect at all. Arxiv has been around for about
15 years, and during that time, the prices of journals have continued to
skyrocket, and the number of expensive, highly specialized journals has also
gone up. I think the recent economic trends in scientific journals have had
nothing to do with arxiv, and everything to do with consolidation in the
industry, e.g., Elsevier buying up other publishers.