What a Mega-Publisher Can Learn from Small Publishers
Remember earlier this year when it surfaced that Elsevier (a large publishing company) was paid by Merck (a large pharmaceutical company) to launch in 2002 a bogus, ostensibly peer-reviewed science journal, "The Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine"? The content of this journal "presented data favorable to Merck products". It wasn't science. What kind of environment and thinking...what kind of organizational culture permits or encourages that kind of thing to happen?
Contrast that with this announcement on the American Institute of Mathematical Sciences, also a publisher of peer-reviewed information:
Announcement: To aid libraries worldwide coping with budget shortfalls due to the global economic crisis, AIMS (American Institute of Mathematical Sciences) has declared an across the board freeze of its journal prices for 2010.
This is the kind of thinking that prompts some libraries to ignore future publications from the large publisher, and buy everything from the smaller publisher. Hats off to the AIMS, you're vetting high quality mathematics and making its dissemination to both the privleged, and to those with flat or shrinking funds, a priority.
Contrast that with this announcement on the American Institute of Mathematical Sciences, also a publisher of peer-reviewed information:
Announcement: To aid libraries worldwide coping with budget shortfalls due to the global economic crisis, AIMS (American Institute of Mathematical Sciences) has declared an across the board freeze of its journal prices for 2010.
This is the kind of thinking that prompts some libraries to ignore future publications from the large publisher, and buy everything from the smaller publisher. Hats off to the AIMS, you're vetting high quality mathematics and making its dissemination to both the privleged, and to those with flat or shrinking funds, a priority.
posted by Bob Noel at 5:23 PM
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