[Taxacom] Paywall our taxonomic tidbit

[metzlere at msu.edu]

Stephen wrote" Perhaps you have set this for me as bait? If so, so be it. Often authors pay for open access using public funding rather than their own personal money. Then the question becomes whether or not that is an appropriate use of public funding, and a whole raft of thorny issues become relevant."

I will rise to the bait.  As a person who must pay page charges from his household budget, with no institutional support of any kind, not even access to a lab, it is a serious problem.  It is not a matter of publish or perish.  It is a matter of living on a pension and publishing at all. 

Maybe some remember the broo ha ha of auctioning a moth name last Autumn - that was me. I never saw any $$, yet we did raise a bunch of money for a worthy charity supporting research in the US National Parks. I'm still looking for a suitable answer, $$ for publishing a paper or $$ for Mrs. Metzler to get just the right shoes so she feels that she looks good.  You decide; both my wife and I are biased.

And the beat goes on.

Cheers from sunny southern NM where I will be blacklighting for moths early next week.

Eric
Eric H. Metzler
Alamogordo, NM US