maybe just a little too strong. i honestly do think that many of the scholarly society publishers do think that their model is the best way to support science and that their model is at risk from government mandates. they are partnering with scientists - scientists are the editors and on the boards and the reviewers... - Christina Pikas

Hmm 'partnering'? According to their website, Elsevier pays 7,000 of their staff and have 970,000 donate time for a 36% profit margin meaning a billion US which could have gone to either research or to library infrastructure and know-how. That seems like a fairly one-sided partnership to me. When does partnership become parasitism? See also: http://bjoern.brembs.net/comment... along the same lines. - Björn Brembs

society publishers. not Elsevier. and not ACS, for that matter, but real societies. - Christina Pikas

Christina was talking about the smaller society publishers like the American Mathematical Society or the Amer. Physical Society, not Elsevingwiley. - Joe Boone

oops, sorry, didn't see the key word 'society'! Those are indeed a different problem which needs solving: should readers of their journals pay for the activities for their members? - Björn Brembs

...or in many cases should non readers of their journal pay for the activities of their members? This is a real problem but the argument seems to be 'don't complain because at the moment we are ripping off other people to pay for activities. If that went away you'd have to pay yourself!' it's a very convolulted way of shifting overheads into travel budgets. Shouldnt we just do that directly? - Cameron Neylon

I commented directly onto the article in question http://is.gd/CAZM8P including a link to this thread. - Graham Steel