[Taxacom] Monbiot editorial on academic publishing

[Stephen Thorpe]

actually, journal paywalls may function at least sometimes in "reality economics" as one of the quick and easy ways to spend research money after institutional "overheads" have been taken out, and then go back to the funders for more. The taxpayer is then the only "mug" , and the institution (and publisher) the winner. This is the "maximum funding - minimal hard work" business model! Another strategy is to do molecular phylogeographic studies (involves a tour from one end of the country to another to collect fresh material of the species under study for DNA analysis, and doubles as a holiday!)
 

From: Richard Petit <r.e.petit at att.net>
To: Frederick W. Schueler <bckcdb at istar.ca>; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Sent: Thursday, 1 September 2011 11:07 AM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Monbiot editorial on academic publishing

Some of us mugs contribute substantial sums and specimens to natural history 
museums. Those of us outside of academia who try to make a contribution to 
our knowledge mostly do so at our own expense. In my case, I have no 
institutional funding or grants and everything I do is with after tax 
dollars. I resort to asking authors for .pdfs but this doesn't work for 
older papers, and some recent authors do not comply with requests.  I 
subscribe to some 20 journals but cannot cover all bases. Friends in 
institutions often make copies for me, but there is a limit to how many 
times one can impose on people with busy schedules.
    I rather imagine a lot of "mugs" (i.e., those buying papers from the 
publishers) are people with grants who simply charge the cost to their 
grants.  In such cases the burden falls back on the taxpayers.

dick p.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Frederick W. Schueler" <bckcdb at istar.ca>
To: <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2011 3:18 PM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Monbiot editorial on academic publishing


> On 8/31/2011 2:39 PM, Wolfgang Wuster wrote:
>> Purely as a matter of interest, does anyone have any figures on how much
>> the academic publishing houses earn from individual pdf sales from their
>> websites? Unless there are even more mugs in the world than I suspected,
>> I expect it won't be a huge amount, since everybody just asks for them
>> by emails to the author...
>
> * even more interesting would be to know what sort of individuals the
> mugs are, and their financial status, but I suppose that information is
> even less available.
>
> fred.
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>          Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad
> Bishops Mills Natural History Centre - http://pinicola.ca/bmnhc.htm
> now in the field on the Thirty Years Later Expedition -
> http://fragileinheritance.org/projects/thirty/thirtyintro.htm
> Daily Paintings - http://karstaddailypaintings.blogspot.com/
>    RR#2 Bishops Mills, Ontario, Canada K0G 1T0
>  on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain 44* 52'N 75* 42'W
>    (613)258-3107 <bckcdb at istar.ca> http://pinicola.ca/
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> _______________________________________________
>
> Taxacom Mailing List
> Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/mailman/listinfo/taxacom
>
> The Taxacom archive going back to 1992 may be searched with either of 
> these methods:
>
> (1) by visiting http://taxacom.markmail.org
>
> (2) a Google search specified as: 
> site:mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom  your search terms here 


_______________________________________________

Taxacom Mailing List
Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/mailman/listinfo/taxacom

The Taxacom archive going back to 1992 may be searched with either of these methods:

(1) by visiting http://taxacom.markmail.org

(2) a Google search specified as:  site:mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom  your search terms here