[Taxacom] Paywall our taxonomic tidbit

[Peter Uetz]

Stephen,

Where do you get your “n” (reader number) from?

Here are some randomly chosen and rather obscure papers from Plos One ($1,495 a piece open access fee) published during the past 5 years:

   Cryptic Speciation Patterns in Iranian Rock Lizards Uncovered by Integrative Taxonomy
   Views: 8299 • Citations: 14 • Saves: 44

   New Metrics for Comparison of Taxonomies Reveal Striking Discrepancies among Species Delimitation Methods in Madascincus Lizards
   Views: 4076 • Citations: 35 • Saves: 106

   Evolution of Body Elongation in Gymnophthalmid Lizards: Relationships with Climate
   Views: 2487 • Citations: 6 • Saves: 36

   Multi-Locus Estimates of Population Structure and Migration in a Fence Lizard Hybrid Zone
   Views: 3244 • Citations: 4 • Saves: 39

   Estimating Ancestral Ranges: Testing Methods with a Clade of Neotropical Lizards (Iguania: Liolaemidae)
   Views: 2819 • Citations: 1 • Saves: 54

If each reader paid only $10 that would be $28,000 for the least-viewed paper and still $360 for the least-saved paper ($140 OA fee at Zootaxa).
And these are only papers from the past 5 years.



> Message: 22
> Date: Fri, 15 Jan 2016 00:22:36 +0000 (UTC)
> From: Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
> To: <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>, "Michael A. Ivie"
> 	<mivie at montana.edu>
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Paywall our taxonomic tidbit
> Message-ID:
> 	<1685864983.5827201.1452817356086.JavaMail.yahoo at mail.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> 
> Mike,
> 
> […] 
> Suppose that n people want to read a given publication. Suppose that they each must pay $100 (from public money) to the publisher in order to read it. It is quite possible that 100n is significantly less than $20/page for open access, given that no more than n people want to read it. Multiply all that by the vast number of limited interest taxonomic articles that get published every year, and the difference in cost gets even greater.
> 
> […]
> Stephen
> 
>