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List:       dmca-discuss
Subject:    [DMCA_Discuss] 3/8/03: A Good FOS News
From:       Seth Johnson <seth.johnson () realmeasures ! dyndns ! org>
Date:       2003-03-08 12:45:41
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(I forward from the Free Online Scholarship Blog very now
and then.  Today's is as good as the rest, but struck me as
particularly encouraging.  -- Seth)

FOS News - http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html

Russ Walter is the author of Secret Guide to Computers
(http://www.secretguide.net/), a very thorough handbook with
excellent reviews and healthy sales.  The full text is
online free of charge, and the same text is for sale in a
printed edition. When the National Academies Press
(http://www.nap.edu/) does this with its books, it finds
that the free editions add more sales than they subtract, so
that NAP profits. But it charges a  competitive market price
for the printed editions. When Walter does it, he charges
less. "I'm not trying to make a profit. I'm  just trying to
make people happy --by charging as little as possible, while
still covering my expenses. Instead of 'charging as  much as
the market will bear', I try to 'charge so little that the
public will cheer'." In addition to giving away his
copyrighted  text, Walter gives permission in advance for
users to make copies, to give away or sell the copies, and
to add their own  comments and call themselves co-authors.
Finally, he publishes his home phone number and offers free
tech help on any  computer question at any hour of the day.
This is serious sharing. (3/7/2003 5:50:05 PM)

Richard Gallagher has an editorial in the March 10 issue of
The Scientist, Will the Walls Come Tumbling Down?
(http://www.the-scientist.com/yr2003/mar/edit_030310.html)
Half the piece is on the open-access journals forthcoming
from the Public Library of Science
(http://www.publiclibraryofscience.org/). The PLoS
"editorial board reads like a  Who's Who of the biology
community" and if its journals are successful, then the
open-access model "will trigger a seismic  change in
academic publishing". The other half is on the defensive
strategies of traditional journals, which are liberalizing 
their copyright and self-archiving policies, though perhaps
not enough to meet the open-access competition. "Now that
there  is a choice of publishing model, the wishes of the
author community remain to be seen. Over to you...."
(3/7/2003 8:22:18  AM)

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