What I'd like to hear from PMC annd JHUP is, whether or not it is possible,
if *both* parties choose toi do so, to reverse this model of distribution,
freeing up the archive and making the current and all further current
issues available only via subscription. Or is this an issue that cannot be
revisited until the end of the current contract?
If Michael Jensen and others at JHUP *really* are opposed to the
commercialization of the Internet, then why is the Frito-Lay site a model
of accessibility, or quality-of-format, or anything else for that matter?
Again, there is no argument that it takes time, effort, and some amount of
money to run an electronic journal. But none of this necessarily requires
that we cling to the current model of locked arhive/open current issue.
>Project Muse is a collection of journals that are predominantly used as a
>collection; searches are run most frequently across the whole group,
>resulting in the students, faculty, and staff of 400 institutions (with
>another 600 currently under discussion) serendipitously discovering articles
>in PMC that they would be unlikely to find otherwise. Audiences who never
>knew about PMC are discovering its content, and following that to read other
>material in the same issue, same volume, same journal.
Indeed this is serendipitous. But I can tell you that my institution
simply cannot afford to subscribe to MUSE -- the cost is exceedingly
prohibitive. And since, as I'm sure Michael Jensen is aware, colleges &
universities nationwide are under a budget crunch, MUSE is simply going to
lead to *fewer* people being able to access PMC. The arguments for how
great MUSE is are like arguments for how safe a new Volvo 900 is -- very
safe indeed, if you can afford one.
But in any case, just about all of the benefits of MUSE that Michael listed
would apply even if the subscription model were altered to free up the
archive.
>Less practically, it means that PMC has a different (and arguably stronger)
>affiliation strength. Being published under the aegis of the largest
>nonprofit electronic publishing program in the humanities may be seen by
>many authors as a useful bonus when it comes time for tenure review. It
>means that PMC can continue to become stronger, more diverse, more rich in
>ideas and presentational strategies, maintaining its "outre" image while
>still providing (to use an unpleasant word) respectability to those who
>need it.
Ugh -- that *is* unpleasant. But while JHUP and MUSE certainly add
something valuable, I would suggest, from my own experience, that the facts
that PMC is juried, and that it has an editorial board of well-known
scholars and writers, are more germane to this particular issue. But it is
certainly *not* a "strength" if I have to tell my Dean that neither he not
the tenure committee can view my wonderful "on-line" scholarship -- not
even at neighboring institutions that do subscribe to MUSE, since these
institutions now use password-protected web-browsing terminals at their
libraries and computer clusters in order to comply with the demand by
information providers, such as OCLC, that only currently registered
students and faculty/staff have accesss to on-campus electronic resources
(never mind that MUSE may not have this rule).
>I'm unwilling to be forced into a defensive stance. What we're doing will
>benefit PMC, and will benefit humanities scholarship. We're not charging
>outrageous subscription rates; we're not forcing a one-size-fits-all cost
>recovery model; we're not luxuriating in profits sqeezed from the labor of
>honest scholars.
No, but you are resistricting access to the corpus of work created by those
scholars in a way that is singularly greater than the limits imposed by
print publications.
>Currently 400 institutional subscriptions, at an
>average %50+ discount (public libraries, high schools, two-year institutions
>get very high discounts that skew the average). In direct PMC costs (labor,
>travel, PMC editorial support, overhead, marketing, promotion), we've spent
>(at this point) twice to three times that income. And it's only May. This is
>not profiteering.
No doubt of that. I'd be interested in knowing of these discount rates,
which I did not see listed at the MUSE pages -- I would like to have an
accurate figure for an institution such as my own.
>The objections to this model seem to be motivated by the sincere wish that
>things were different; that the Internet would provide a nearly cost-free
>avenue of public discourse; that intellectual presentation of ideas can be
>free from the tawdry world of lucre; or that the light which PMC cast should
>continue to shine as a beacon of opportunity.
>
>But that presumes a sort of binary state--either free or pay, either
>untrammeled or soiled, either open or closed.
No, no *no*! The one salient and recurring question that Michael does not
address in his posting, is whether or not the subscription model may be
*changed* so that the archive is free. I for one would have no problem
with the JHUP arrangement if this change could be made, and it's neither
utopian nor purist to ask.
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Nolite te bastardes | Russell A. Potter, Ph.D.|"It ain't where you're from
carborundum | a.k.a. Professa RAP |it's where you're at" -Rakim
| <-----RAP-----> |
"it's after the end of | * |"I don't want a god who
the world" -- Sun RA | rpklc@URIACC.URI.EDU | blesses America" - KRS-One
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