Stuart’s response on open access

Interesting response by Stuart Elden HERE.

The one point where he firmly disagrees is on my question about why “issues” of journals are still needed given a technological landscape that would now allow us to post articles one at a time. Stuart’s response to this is that he puts a lot of work as an editor into arranging the articles in a certain way. Fair enough; he should be applauded for that. But I should also add that Stuart’s journal is exceptionally fast in publishing articles. Not all are like that.

“None of this justifies Springer’s outrageous charge of course.”

We certainly agree here. Admittedly, there are some benefits to Springer’s ultra-streamlined corporate approach to articles. And for purely “celebration of the 21st century” reasons, I enjoyed the fact that the entire proofreading staff is located in Chennai (or was that Sage? I think both do all their final editing in India, anyway, and it was fun to fax my corrections there). But the business end of the arrangements causes shock and dismay at times.

And, it won’t last. Libraries often have the sharpest young things on their staff of any portion of a university, often tech-savvy and hard to outwit. I know how hard it is for people to bullsh*t our librarians in Cairo, and eventually they’re going to find ways to outflank these cartels.