Taxacom: open access journals

[Leslie Watling]

John,
your point is well taken. With today's email programs it is hard to do. As
a case in point, I forgot to eliminate the long text I was responding to in
my previous email.... hahaha.... oh well, but here is how to do it in
gmail.

At the bottom of the text box are three little dots in the left hand
corner. Click on that and you get the whole of the message you are replying
to. After that its a bit tricky, at least in Windows. You need to click at
the beginning of the text, then use the slider bar to scroll to the end,
the Shift-click with the cursor positioned after all the text. That should
highlight all the text to be deleted. Then hit delete.

If I did it right then this reply should only have your message and my
previous one attached, as I left them in.

Best,
Les


Les Watling
Professor Emeritus
School of Life Sciences
University of Hawaii

Professor Emeritus
School of Marine Sciences
University of Maine



On Thu, Aug 3, 2023 at 3:06 PM John Grehan <calabar.john at gmail.com> wrote:

> "When responding to a message, please do not copy the entire digest
> into your reply." - In my case, wish that I could, but have not been able
> to find a way for gmail on my computer to do that, even with some others
> trying to assist to find a way. It's a pain in the neck.
>
> John Grehan
>
> On Thu, Aug 3, 2023 at 1:26 PM Leslie Watling via Taxacom <
> taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:
>
>> Hi Taxacomers,
>> First thing... almost no one seems to pay attention to this notice at the
>> beginning of the daily Taxacom digest:
>> Daily News from the Taxacom Mailing List
>>
>> When responding to a message, please do not copy the entire digest into
>> your reply.
>> Thus the daily digest is often too long for my gmail account to not cut it
>> off and send me off to some other page to finish reading it. Besides the
>> endless bloody scrolling it takes to go through everybody's this and that
>> that they stack in their address block at the end of their email message.
>>
>> Second, on the matter of OA journals. Some interesting comments here for
>> sure, but I have to say, having been in this academic publishing business
>> now for more than 50 years, that sometimes the older solution is still the
>> best one. Granted, the landscape has changed unfortunately with various
>> consolidations in the publishing business.
>>
>> In the old days we published wherever we could get our paper accepted. It
>> was almost always behind a paywall. The solution was to see the journal in
>> the university library, and failing that, to get the author's address from
>> an abstracting service cand send them a little postcard requesting a copy
>> (reprint, it was called) of the paper. A few weeks later the paper would
>> arrive in the mail. Science went on, perhaps a little more slowly than
>> now,
>> but I kind of doubt it. There was also a certain amount of pride in
>> receiving a very large number of postcards with stamps from everywhere
>> requesting one's own paper.
>>
>> I have so far never, and I expect to end my career, with never having paid
>> OA charges. There are still many good journals that one can publish in
>> without paying anything. I do my due diligence with respect to reviewing,
>> have been an editor, and all that, but I figure that OA is just robbery
>> from gullible academics and their institutions. Of course, publishing
>> costs
>> money and someone has to pay for it. But with editing and reviewing being
>> done for free by our colleagues, I can see no reason for paying exorbitant
>> publication charges.
>>
>> As for the paywall model, well, with the internet and pdf, and now with
>> ResearchGate, etc., any paper can be had, and relatively fast, by sending
>> a
>> note to the author (the equivalent of sending a postcard) asking for a
>> pdf.
>> Failing all that, my university, at least, has a fabulous interlibrary
>> loan
>> service which will also deliver papers in the form of pdf from
>> institutions
>> that do have a subscription to the journal I might be interested in. So,
>> as
>> far as I can see there is no way I can NOT get a copy of something I think
>> I might need.
>>
>> All the best,
>> Les
>>
>>
>> Les Watling
>> Professor Emeritus
>> School of Life Sciences
>> University of Hawaii
>>
>> Professor Emeritus
>> School of Marine Sciences
>> University of Maine
>>
>>
>>
>>
>