>Re access: Currently, 260 institutions and 80 public libraries are Muse
>subscribers; that represents something like 2.4 million university students,
>faculty, and staff who have unencumbered access to PMC, and another 3
>million by way of the public libraries of Cleveland and Pittsburgh.
I don't have the numbers in front of me, but what percentage does this
represent, either of university/college students or of public libraries?
And how many of these 260 institutions are public colleges or universities
with affordable tuition? And before you start chalking up the population
of Cleveland (my home town), be more specific: I believe you have to go to
the library to get this access, people in Cleveland who have internet
access will still need to drive or walk somewhere to get PMC.
>PMC is reaching entirely new audiences through Muse--community colleges,
>even high schools, public libraries, etc.--and there are lots of people
>performing searches on Muse-the-mass which turn up PMC articles, leading to
>those works being read by people interested in topics far afield from PMC's
>domain. This could be exceedingly good for the journal, for the authors, and
>for the ideas underlying the articles themselves.
No doubt such 'bundling' of resources inevitably reaches "new" audiences,"
just as corporate mergers opnen up what appear to be "new" markets. But
insofar as the bundling represents a reduction of the number of *potential*
users (albeit an apparent rise in the numer of *actual* ones) it is
nonetheless a limitation upon use.
>And to confirm John's statement about copyright, JHUP is granted
>nonexclusive rights to publish--authors can do with something what they
>will. PMC's rights model is very appealing in spite of its "threat" to the
>traditional "rights" of publishers. It fits with our overall mission as a
>nonprofit scholarly publishers, and we're beginning to adopt it for many of
>our other journals.
That's good to know. But, given that, doesn't it make all the more sense
to charge for the new issues rather than the archive, since the rights are
supposed to be nonexclusive? Why lock something up and then say, you're
free to unlock it? Why not instead sign *new* PMC authors to a two-tier
contract that, as is the case with most commercial magazines, grants
*exclusive* rights of first appearance, and then returns the copyright to
to the author?
Russell Potter
English Department
Rhode Island College
rpklc@URIACC.URI.EDU