Showing posts sorted by date for query journals. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query journals. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Tuesday, September 12, 2023

Online issues of Indological journals

I repeatedly find my self searching for back issues of journals, and between searches I forget what I learned the first time.  Here are some notes to myself, to remind myself what can be found online.  I'm writing this in April 2018, so moving walls will have moved in future years.
  • Indo-Iranian Journal
  • Indologica Taurinensia
  • Journal asiatique (with gaps):
  • Journal of Indian and Buddhist Studies (Indogaku Bukkyogaku Kenkyu)

  • JIABS: Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 

  • Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal
  •  Journal of the Royal Asiatic of Bengal
  • Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bombay
  • Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society
    • 1824-1834 JSTOR (Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland)
    • 1834-1990 JSTOR (The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland
    • 1991-2013 JSTOR (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society)
  • Journal of the Pali Text Society
  • Orientalia Suecana
  • Philosophy East and West 1951-2014
  • The Pandit many issues identified and linked at Shreevatsa's blog.
  • Transactions of the Philological Society  
    • many issues from 1854-1946 identified and linked by U. Penn.
  • Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Süd- und Ostasiens
    • 1991-20?? JSTOR , five-year moving wall.
  • Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft
    • 1847-present (I believe) JSTOR; MLU (1847-2013, more coming).
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Thursday, September 29, 2016

What's the point of an academic journal?

Presuppositions

I find that I often read my academic colleagues' papers at academia.edu and other similar repositories, or they send me their drafts directly.  I am not always aware of whether the paper has been published or not.  Sometimes I can see that I'm looking at a word-processed document (double spacing, etc.); other times the paper is so smart it's impossible to distinguish from a formally-published piece of writing (LaTeX etc.).

Reading colleagues' drafts gives me access to the cutting edge of recent research.  Reading in a journal can mean I'm looking at something the author had finished with one, two or even three years ago.  In that sense, reading drafts is like attending a conference.  You find out what's going on, even if the materials are rough at the edges.  You participate in the current conversation.

In many ways, reading colleagues' writings informally like this is more similar to the medieval ways of knowledge-exchange that were dominated by letter-writing.  The most famous example is Mersenne (fl. 1600), who was at the centre of a very important network of letter-writers, and just preceded the founding of the first academic journal, Henry Oldenberg's Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (founded 1665).

What am I missing?


Editorial control

What I don't get by reading private drafts is the curatorial intervention of a board of editors.  A journal's editorial board acts as a gatekeeper for knowledge, making decisions about what is worth propagating and what is not worth propagating.  The board also makes small improvements and changes to submissions, required since many academic authors are poor writers, and because of the natural processes of error. So, a good editorial board makes curatorial decisions about what to display, and improves quality.

Counter-argument: Many editorial boards don't do their work professionally. The extended "advisory board members" are window-dressing; the real editorial activity is often carried out by only one dynamic person, perhaps with secretarial support.  This depends, of course, on the size of the journal and the academic field it serves.  I'm thinking of sub-fields in the humanities.

Archiving and findability

A journal also provides archival storage for the long term.  This is critically important.  An essential process in academic work is to "consult the archive."  The archive has to actually be there in order to be accessed.  A journal - in print or electronically - offers a stable way of finding scholars' work through metadata tagging (aka cataloguing), and through long-term physical or electronic storage.  If I read a colleagues' draft, I may not be able to find it again in a year's time.  Is it still at academia.edu?  Where?  Did I save a copy on my hard drive?  Is my hard drive well-organized and backed up (in which case, is it a journal of sorts?)?

Counter-argument:  Are electronic journals archival?  Are they going to be findable in a decade's time?  Some are, some aren't.  The same goes for print, but print is - at the present time - more durable, and more likely to be findable in future years.  An example is the All India Ayurvedic Directory, published in the years around the 1940s.  A very valuable document of social and medical history.  It's unavailable through normal channels.  Only a couple of issues have been microfilmed or are in libraries.  Most of the journal is probably available in Kottayam or Trissur in Kerala, but it would take a journey to find it and a lot of local diplomatic effort to be given permission to see it.  Nevertheless, it probably exists, just.

Prestige

A journal may develop a reputation that facilitates trust in the articles published by that journal.  This is primarily of importance for people who don't have time to read for themselves and to engage in the primary scholarly activity of thinking and making judgements based on arguments and evidence.  A journal's prestige may also play a part in embedding it in networks of scholarly trust and shared but not known knowledge, in the sense developed by Michael Polanyi (Personal Knowledge, The Tacit Dimension and other writings).

Conclusion

At the moment, I can't think of any other justifications for the existence of journals.  But if editorial functions and long-term storage work properly, they are major factors that are worth having.

Further reading

  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_journal#New_developments
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholarly_communication
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serials_crisis
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Monday, July 08, 2013

Resources for OA book publication

My post "Some OA journals that publish S-Asia related research," was self-evidently devoted to journals.

There is also a growing field of services for publishing OA books.  Some research funding agencies, such as the FWF in Austria, require contractually that books too should be published OA.  To me, the business model for OA book publishing is less clear than that for journals, and I see many difficulties.  Nevertheless, the field is growing.

Some resources:
  • Directory of Open Access Books

    "The primary aim of DOAB is to increase discoverability of Open Access books. Academic publishers are invited to provide metadata of their Open Access books to DOAB. Metadata will be harvestable in order to maximize dissemination, visibility and impact."
  • Knowledge Unlatched

    "Knowledge Unlatched is a not-for-profit organisation committed to helping global communities share the costs of Open Access publishing so that good books continue to be published and more readers are able to engage with them."
  • Open Humanities Press

    "The basic idea is simple: making peer-reviewed literature permanently available, free of charge and freely redistributable by taking advantage of the low cost and wide access of internet distribution." ... "After looking at the various efforts underway, we concluded that an editorially-driven international press, focused on building respect through its brand, is what is required to tackle the digital 'credibility' problem. With OHP, we aim to emulate the strengths and flexibility of commercial presses, while avoiding the institutional limitations of the university-based e-presses."
  • Open Edition

    "OpenEdition is the umbrella portal for OpenEdition Books, Revues.org, Hypotheses and Calenda, four platforms dedicated to electronic resources in the humanities and social sciences."
  • Open Edition Books

    "OpenEdition Books est une plateforme de livres en sciences humaines et sociales. Plus de la moitié d'entre eux est en libre accès. Des services complémentaires sont proposés via les bibliothèques et institutions abonnées."
  • Open Access Publishing European Network

    "Online library and publication platform.  The OAPEN Library contains freely accessible academic books, mainly in the area of Humanities and Social Sciences. OAPEN works with publishers to build a quality controlled collection of Open Access books, and provides services for publishers, libraries and research funders in the areas of dissemination, quality assurance and digital preservation."
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Thursday, January 31, 2013

Some OA journals that publish S-Asia related research

Name and URL online print Fee?* Copyright Licence DOAJ
------- --- ------ -------- --------- ---------------- ------
Journal of Indian and Buddhist Studies (Indogaku Bukkyogaku Kenkyu) Y Y ? ? "Free" no entry
Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies Y Y ? ? Full OA no entry
Bhāṣā: Journal of South Asian
Linguistics, Philology and
Grammatical Traditions		 Y N N author CC-BY no entry
Himalaya Y N N not stated CC DOAJ
Studia Orientalia Electronica Y N N author Full OA no entry
वागर्थः (An International Journal of
Sanskrit Research)		 Y Y ₹5900/-
unstated but OA no entry
KERVAN - International Journal of
Afro-Asiatic Studies		 Y N N author CC-BY no entry
Social Sciences Y Y N author OA
 DOAJ
Journal of World Philosophies (formerly Confluence) Y N N journal CC BY no entry
Journal of Bengali Studies Y N? N author a benign muddle DOAJ
Acta Poética Y N? N journal CC BY-NC DOAJ
Linguistica Y Y? N author CC BY-SA DOAJ
Hiperboreea Y N? N journal CC BY-NC-ND DOAJ
Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis Y ? N journal CC BY-NC-ND DOAJ
Ancient Science of Life Y Y N journal CC BY-NC-SA DOAJ
Asian Studies Y N N author CC BY-SA DOAJ
Acta Linguistica Asiatica Y N N author CC BY-SA DOAJ
South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal Y N N journal CC BY-NC-ND DOAJ
Journal of Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine Y Y N journal CC BY-NC-SA DOAJ
Journal of Ayurveda and
Holistic Medicine		 Y N? ₹1500
for Ind.
nationals		 journal CC BY-NC-SA
History of Science in South Asia Y Y N author CC BY-SA DOAJ
Asian Literature and Translation Y not yet N author CC
Ancient Asia Y N? N? author CC BY DOAJ
Approaching Religion Y N? N?


Relegere: Studies in Religion and Reception Y N N author

Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde Y N N journal CC BY-NC DOAJ
Asian Social Science Y Y $300


Studi Linguistici e Filologici Online Y N N


eJIM - eJournal of
Indian Medicine		 Y Y, cost N


Journal of History and Social Sciences Y N N?


Annals of Ayurvedic Medicine Y N N


Rivista di Studi Sudasiatici Y Y N


Himalayan Linguistics Y N N


Journal of South Asian Linguistics Y N N?


Annual of Urdu Studies Y Y, cost N


Pacific WorldJournal of the Institute of Buddhist Studies Y Y, free N? journal

Health, Culture and Society Y N N author CC BY DOAJ
Open Journal of Philosophy Y N $400+
$50/page
above 10 pages		 journal

International Journal of Jaina Studies Y Y
 N journal Print copies
from HGK
Asian Ethnology olim
Asian Folklore Studies		 Y Y N journal

Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies Y N N?
restricted
OA policy
Transcultural Studies Y N N



And see the India-related list that used to be maintained by Scholars Without Borders (mostly science and medicine):

Saying that a journal is OA still leaves some critical questions unanswered.  E.g.,
  1. Is there a "going in" fee, or Article Processing Fee (APF)?
    One of the items in the list above charges $300.  Several of the big houses like Brill, Elsevier and Springer will also publish your article as OA, even in an otherwise non-OA journal, if you pay them enough.  Their APF prices are typically $3000 (Springer, Elsevier).  I am not interested in including such journals in the list above, as I consider anything above $300-500 to be profiteering.  APFs of $300-500 are typical of some even very large OA publishers like Hindawi, proving that this is a valid business model. 
    Quite apart from my personal view, I do not think APF fees of $3000 meet most people's normal expectation of the meaning of an Open Access journal.  As South Asianists, we are interested in access for both readers and authors in countries where scholars are relatively poor.  A high APF mutes less wealthy authors.  As such, both Gratis OA (also called "Diamond OA") and low or zero APFs are indexes of relevance.
  2. Copyright: being OA means that whoever owns the copyright has given permission for the article to be disseminated at zero cost.  But it doesn't say anything about who owns the copyright of the article.  Many OA journals allow the authors to retain copyright, but not all.
  3. Is the journal online-only, or both online and in print?
  4. The online version is free by definition, but the print issues would usually cost something.  How much?
  5. Is the journal indexed by the main global indexing services?
  6. Is the journal peer-reviewed? Strongly or weakly?

More distinctions (e.g., Gratis OA (free of price) and Libre OA (free of price and rights restrictions)) and discussion in Wikipedia (consulted 13 Feb 2012).  The Sherpa/Romeo website helps with some of this.

I'm putting some indicators in parentheses after the journal title, for those cases where I can find out the information without correspondence.

It is often hard to find out these facts from the journals' websites.  This suggests to me that for some of the editors, the various business models of OA publishing are not always well understood. 

[2022-11: I keep the above list up to date as I hear of new journals.  But some of the work of this blog post has now been superseded by FOASAS.]



---
*APF = Article Processing Fee, a fee that the publisher charges the author or the author's institution for publication in the Open Access journal.  See discussion in Wikipedia (consulted 12 Feb 2012).

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Monday, January 21, 2013

Business models for Open Access journals

It seems to be becoming clear that OA publishing will come to be the dominant model for academic periodical publications.  This change is happening rapidly in Science, Technology and Medicine publishing.  It can be expected that Humanities journals will eventually follow in even greater numbers than at present.

As things change, some interesting new business models are emerging.  See http://peerJ.com, for example.  It turns on its head the idea of subscribing to a learned society and getting the society's journal.  Quite fascinating. 

See also the new OA projects by CUP, (£500 publishing fee) and especially Tim Gowers' blog., that describes several key points clearly.


Some of my own thoughts

In August 2008 I did some brain-storming on this subject with my friends C. V. Radhakrishnan and Kaveh Bazargan.  Here are some of my notes from those exchanges.

I was thinking about this problem that if the funding model changes from "reader pays" to "author pays", then not everyone could afford to publish.  Independent scholars, or those at 3rd world universities, might be priced out of publication.
  1. An OA journal *must* consider itself free to publish good peer-reviewed research, whether or not there's funding.  So there has to be a "let-out" or discretionary waiver clause in any statement about pricing.
  2. Would it be feasible for the journal to have a sliding scale of charges that is directly keyed to the budget of the institution to which the author belongs?  University budgets should be publicly available somewhere, shouldn't they?  It might take a bit of work to track them down, but it could be done.  Or the authors could simply be asked to provide that information.  In any case, if a university has a big endowment or annual budget, then their staff would be charged more to publish in the journal, and v.v.  Independent scholars would be free (?) or <$100. 

    The general idea is that a scholar from Cambridge Univ. or the TIFR, Bombay, could be charged $500 to publish an article in our hypothetical OA journal, on the assumption that his department has a budget for this (an "article processing fee").  Whereas Prof. Shivaramakrishna from a Jnanamatha in Trichy, or a Dr Salvador from Havana Univ., could be permitted to publish at $30.

    Or if direct keying is not easy to implement, there could at least be general funding bands: we could find somebody else's ranking, perhaps UNESCO, for national education budgets, or educational funding, and use those as bands for submission charges.
  3. Here's an important tweak.  I think this kind of banded charging can be thought of a bit like Google's AdSense advertising system.  Basically, the university is paying to have its name associated with the research that is published.  So at the top of the article it says,

      Dominik Wujastyk
      University College London
      [university address]

    and the University pays the journal $100 (or whatever) for document processing.

    However, if I - as an author - choose, I can say instead,

       Dominik Wujastyk
       Independent Scholar
       [home address]

    and then there would be no charge for document processing.

    It wouldn't matter to the journal whether it was actually true or not that DW was an "independent scholar". The point is, if there's no payment, then the university or research sponsor doesn't get its name mentioned, and is therefore not formally associated with the research. This treats the association of the university's name with the research rather like advertising or product placement.

    Most research contracts require the academic to include acknowledgement in his publications of the source of the funding. "This research was carried out under grant 123456789 of the National Science Foundation". So if the NSF is making such a requirement, they have to pay for it to be done. It's quite like advertising.
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Saturday, August 04, 2012

Authors' expectations

While journals like Medical History disseminate new knowledge and try to achieve fairness for authors and readers, I think we should all be striving for clarity and transparency.
  • People trying to read and cite articles should not have trouble working out what they are looking at, or worrying about whether this version is identical to that version, and so on.
  • Authors who have written for MH in the past should feel confident that their rights have been respected and their work is clearly and accurately published (whether in print or online) in the manner they expected at the time of publication.
  • Authors considering publication in MH in the future should have clear knowledge of the terms under which their papers will be published.  They should be able to answer these questions quickly and easily:
    • Will I have to pay for my article to be published?
    • Will the public have to pay to read my article?
    • Will I own the copyright of my article?
    • Can my article be reproduced, sold or re-sold without my consent or without paying me?
My views on some of the key issues above are laid out briefly in my January 2012 blog post Copyright and Open Access.
I have also tabulated these key issues for a number of journals that publish in my field, in the post Some OA journals that publish on South Asia.
What I discovered while assembling that information is that many journals do not provide clear information on these basic issues.  I think this is most often because the editors are simply ignorant of these matters.  This is not the case with CUP, but it appears to me that their policies err in the other direction, and are over-complex and hard for legally-naive academic authors to understand.  In the case of Medical History it is still the case that the document outlining the journal's policies in this matter contains opacities, if not self-contradictions (see next blog post).  Hopefully these will be ironed out soon.
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Friday, August 03, 2012

Medical history: CUP breaching author's copyright? (cont.)

In an earlier post, I said I had written to CUP about two issues relating to an article that I wrote and of which I own the copyright,
  1. Their website's assertion that they own the copyright of my article, and 
  2. That they are bundling my Open Access article in a commercial package. 
Daniel Pearce, Commissioning Editor, HSS Journals at CUP has now written back a friendly and apologetic email letter, saying among other things,
I can confirm that an error has been made [...] in respect to the XML header files which accompany a subset of Medical History articles.  As a consequence, as you identify, our platform is currently displaying the incorrect copyright line for your article.  This is entirely unintentional.  It has never been our intention, and is not our intention now, to claim copyright over your article or the articles of any author in the same position as you.   To put this right we have requested a re-supply of XML as a priority and hope to be in a position to correct the copyright lines on all relevant articles on the live site today.  Naturally, we would like to issue an unreserved apology to you for this mistake.
I'm relieved about this, and glad that it has been possible to clear things up gracefully.
Mr Pearce will be writing to me again next week about question 2, when the people who know about these issues are back in the office.
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Friday, June 22, 2012

(Deep breath) Medical history again

The story so far

My three previous blogs on this topic are, in chronological order,  1 here, 2 here, and 3 here.
(All my blogs on the topic of the journal Medical History are collected here.)


  1. In the first post, I sketched the history of this important journal and expressed regret about the journal's move from the Free-to-read, Open Access, author's copyright model to a pay-to-read, closed access, publisher's copyright model. 

    The journal's new editor, Sanjoy Bhattacharya, responded here, defending the new policies.
  2. I responded here, noting that the new website was inconsistent, and that there were unsolved contradictions about payment structures, and that in no case did the publisher offer the author the option of retaining copyright.
  3. When the first new issue appeared in January 2012, I noted that articles were freely downloadable and authors were ascribed copyright. This was very good for the authors and readers, but some contradictory information about rights and payments continued to be present on the publisher's website. 

And now...

No abstract
The April 2012 issue of Medical History is out.  I'm sorry indeed to see that things have changed for both this issue and the previous January one.  The freedoms that were earlier present in the January issue have been revoked.  The statements giving authors copyright have been removed.  Articles are not freely downloadable.

No way to read the article...
Most bizarre of all, no articles are now readable at all.  Even at a price.  The website give abstracts for most - but not all - articles (see above right).  But that's all.  Even if you have an account with the CUP journals site, and log in, you still cannot read any articles in Medical History.
You can link to them, you can refer to them, you can link, blog and write to the author.  You can request permissions, e.g., to reprint or copy the article.  You can do most things, except reading the articles (see left).

This surely has to be a temporary glitch?

If you are logging in from an institutional licensee, such as a university network, then yes, you can download the PDFs.  But if you do not have such an affiliation, then you cannot download any article.

No downloads at PMC
I thought that perhaps the articles were now at Pub Med Central (PMC), as Sanjoy had said they would be, and that readers were meant to know this and read the articles from there.  But that's not the case either.  Neither of the new issues has appeared at PMC (see right).  It was always understood that there would be a time-lag before articles appeared at PMC, and the journal is starting again from zero, administratively speaking, so perhaps it's just a matter of patience before the freely-downloadable version of the articles appear.

Subscription prices
However, as long as an individual cannot download the articles at all from anywhere, I suppose the only way to read the journal is to order a printed copy.  But one can only buy the printed journal if one is an organisation (left).  So for anyone who doesn't have access to an institutional licence, access to Medical History is limited or impossible.

Back issues

And, confusingly, CUP is offering to sell rights to consult the past archive, that the Wellcome Trust has paid for already to be freely available at PMC: "... access to the digitised archive must be purchased separately. Please email [so-and-so] for a tailored package quote." This again must be a glitch.

In general, it looks as if CUP is trying to fit Medical History into a Procrustean bed designed for its other more commercial offerings.

On CUP's MH website under "back issues / digitised archive," selected past issues of MH are now displayed (see right).  But once again, there is no button for actually downloading a PDF for any of the articles.  Nor is there any link to PMC, where whole journal from 1957-2011 is already available free.

New Open Access Policy

I think the terms of the Open Access agreement for Medical History have changed since I last looked at them.  I don't remember seeig the following statement:
If you choose to publish your article in this way [Open Access] you are required to complete the following form, within one week of your
manuscript being accepted for publication by Medical History. If you prefer not to take part in the Open Access option,
you need not do anything; your article will be published in the usual way, with access to the complete text being available only
to subscribers. [my bold]
The corresponding author should complete this form, and by doing so he or she authorises that the full charge of £425/$675,
plus VAT where applicable, will be paid.
CUP will NOT grant Open Access to your article unless you pay them $675.  This statement raises serious questions about whether all articles will continue to appear in PMC, as asserted by Sanjoy and as desired by the Wellcome Trust.

Summary

So, where do things stand now?
  1. Authors don't have copyright, in any model of publication in MH.
  2. Articles are not freely downloadable.
  3. Articles cannot be downloaded at all by private persons, even for purchase.
  4. Private persons apparently cannot buy the print version of journal issues.
  5. CUP wants to charge for access to past archived issues of the journal.
  6. No article will be available Open Access unless $675 is paid by the author.
I still hope that some of these issues are just teething problems.  I also hope that, as Sanjoy said, articles will appear as free downloads at the PMC site, in a "version of record," and that the current de facto embargo period of six months and growing is also just an initial administrative problem.

Between 2005 and 2011, Medical History was an Open Access journal that assigned copyright to individual authors, and charged no fee to authors or to readers.  The journal embraced all the best and most innovative models of the distribution of scholarly knowledge (see Open knowledge, Open definition, Open Access).   That model of publication has been abandoned, in favour of a closed-access, strongly commercialized system.  If all MH articles start to appear for free, full-text, version-of-record download at PMC, it will make a big difference.  But it remains hard to see how the commercial and copyright requirements of CUP can be squared with free distribution though PMC.

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Friday, March 30, 2012

"Medical History" going from free, Open Access, Creative Commons licensed to copyright-controlled closed access (contd.)

Hi, Sanjoy, thanks for responding. 

What you say in your comment differs from what the CUP website says, and on all the most important points.  Some things still need clearing up.

If all authors are to retain copyright, why does the CUP website for medical history present "Transfer of Copyright" forms to prospective MH authors? Here's the location:
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayMoreInfo?jid=MDH&type=tcr

The first, non-OA form says, "The Journal's policy is to acquire copyright in all contributions."

The second, OA form also requires authors to transfer their copyright to CUP in full, just like the first.  In spite of having paid a $1350 fee to CUP, authors who sign this form will not retain copyright of their own work.  It is CUP, as the new copyright holder, who will offer a Creative Commons licence, not the author.  As they say in the form, "Cambridge University Press will licence such uses under the following Creative Commons licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike".  And in fact, it is not even a full CC licence, since CUP specifically forbids authors from using their articles in certain ways.

In all cases, therefore, both closed- and open- access, the CUP website clearly states that it is CUP and not the authors who will hold the copyright.  This is the opposite of the journal's policy from 2005 to 2011, and the opposite of what you say in your comment above.

Where the CUP website talks about "Gold Open Access",
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displaySpecialPage?pageId=3384
I think they are being slightly misleading.  They say, "Gold Open Access: Authors may opt to publish their article under a Creative Commons licence by paying a one-off article processing charge, making their article freely available to all."  I think most readers would, like you, assume from this statement that it is the author who will own the Creative Commons licence.  But that is incorrect.  CUP will be the owner of the CC license, and the copyright.  The author is paying CUP so that CUP - qua copyright holder - will issue a CC licence.  The author's relationship to their own research is therefore just the same as any other member of the public, with CUP controlling all the rights.

--

Can you really confirm that the PMC version of MH articles will be, as you say, the "final version of record"?  The CUP documentation
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displaySpecialPage?pageId=3384
uses the phrase "Accepted Manuscript" which is not the same thing.  An "accepted manuscript" would normally not have the pagination of the final version, nor the final edits of CUP's editorial staff.  So it is not usually an adequate source for scholarly citation, and it is not what appears in print.

If you are right in asserting that it is the "final version of record" that will go into PMC, then I think readers of your comment may wonder why any MH author would ever choose to pay the $1350 "Golden" fee, if their article is already freely available on the web in "final, published version of record".  Does it seem good value to pay $1350 in order to have one's article available from a second website, when it is already freely downloadable from PMC?

I look forward to your clarifications.

And to be clear myself: I applaud your efforts to give MH a future, and I applaud the Wellcome Trust for their generosity.  I just sincerely hope that the new deal for MH isn't Faustian.  The model under which MH operated from 2005 was so exemplary - with true, free OA, and authors' copyright - that it would inevitably be sad to see the doors slamming shut.
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Wednesday, March 28, 2012

CUP online article rental

As you can tell, I'm interested in newly-emerging models for the distribution of academic knowledge.

Cambridge University Press sells articles from its journals for about $30 each.  But they have also introduced a "rental" system, whereby they will give you online access to the PDF of an article for 24 hours at a much lower price, typically $5.99.  See here for an example.  A rented article cannot be downloaded, printed or cut-n-pasted (details here).

I have not been able to test this service, because it depends on a java applet, and on my system this does not initialize correctly.  I get a blank screen.  I've tried both Firefox and Chromium.  I'm using a correct and up-to-date version of java,

java version "1.6.0_23"OpenJDK Runtime Environment (IcedTea6 1.11pre) (6b23~pre11-0ubuntu1.11.10.2)OpenJDK Server VM (build 20.0-b11, mixed mode)
running under Ubuntu, all very standard.  It seems likely that CUP hasn't tested their new rental delivery system widely enough yet.  CUP gives no warnings about any problems, nor any specifications about special systems or computer platforms that may be necessary.  All they say is that you need a browser and internet access.
Caveat emptor.
This is an interesting model, and I think I quite like it.  The abstracts of articles are available freely, so one can get a reasonably good idea of what is likely to be in the article without paying anything.  It would be better to have page one also.  The 24-hour access is interesting because it means you have to decide to read the article just before you rent it.  You have a day and a night to read it.  Sometimes I download an article but then never get round to reading it.  The rental system makes that impossible.  You can't keep it, and your time is running out, so it is likely that you will pay and then read the thing there and then, barring interruptions from your children.

The price, $5.99, is nearly right, but it is still too high.  It is a deterrent price.  It effectively stops you browsing items that might-or-might-not be of interest.  It kills serendipity, which is a crucial element of serious academic research.  A reasonable price would be $3-$4, which in today's economy is a fair price for something that is likely to be only about 20 pages long at the outside, and usually of undetermined value to your research.  Compare with emusic.com charging £0.42-£0.49 for a single track from a CD.

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