Re: Open Access Academic Publications

"M. Sean Fosmire" <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.culture.law.network-lawyers
Message-ID <[email protected]>
I would see nothing wrong with widespread *paid* distribution of law
reviews and other periodicals via the internet.  Such a service could be
very cost-effective and still make some money for the sponsoring law
schools.  

Paper and binding boards constitute a major obstacle to access.  If a
current subscriber has to pay $57.50 per year for eight issues of the
Harvard Law Review, at least $35 of that amount (to WAG it a bit) is
paying for printing presses, paper, and delivery systems to get a paper
version in my hands. Would the normal user pay $25 per year to get an
electronic version, bypassing the presses and the mail, and in the
process getting a searchable version that takes up no shelf space? Would
librarians prefer the electronic version for those reasons?  You bet. 
And I would bet that far more people would subscribe at the lower prices. 
If the HLR sells 1,000 copies of each paper version @$57, it could
probably sell 2,000 e-versions @$25, and maybe 8,000 @$10 per year.  The
math results in: 

paper - maybe $22,000 in net revenue after expenses 
e-version at $25 - $50,000
e-version at $10 - $80,000

And for the e-versions, the expenses are negligible.  

M. Sean Fosmire 
yclipse technologies
Marquette, Michigan 
[email protected]
http://www.yclipse.com
----------------------



------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
Buy Ink Cartridges or Refill Kits for your HP, Epson, Canon or Lexmark
Printer at MyInks.com.  Free s/h on orders $50 or more to the US & Canada.
http://www.c1tracking.com/l.asp?cid=5511
http://us.click.yahoo.com/mOAaAA/3exGAA/qnsNAA/dpFolB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->

-/-/-/-/-/

There is a read/write Web page with resources that will be linked there and used during the Seminar on PDFs for lawyers and legal applications:

http://Network-Lawyers.org/PDFLinks

-/-/-/-/-/


 
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
     http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Network-Lawyers/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
     Network-Lawyers-unsubscribe-hHKSG33TihhbjbujkaE4pw@public.gmane.org

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
     http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
lmpx.com only provides a reader for public news (NNTP) servers. It is not affiliated with the servers or forums shown here and is not responsible for the content of articles, which is written by their respective authors.