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<SOAPBOX>high cost of journals </SOAPBOX>



<SOAPBOX>
Print journals cost a great deal in 'typesetting', printing, binding and mailing. This and a
limited subscription list leads to $7000 a year subscription prices, which includes some
unknown profit margin for folks like Elsevier.

Today, with the internet, there is no requirement for typesetting cost, or binding or
mailing, since the journal can be put directly on line. Indeed, one of the requirements
for accepting an article could be its legibility on an existing web page.

There would and should be a cost to maintain a secure archive of properly refereed
articles in a given journal, but this function would not have to be in the hands of 'print
publishers' like Elsevier.

It would take someone innovative to figure out a pricing structure to cover the costs of a
journal like this, but I imagine that the subscriptions would be an order of magnitude
lower. [One can imagine some explicit discussions at a Nuclear Physics (or other
specialty) meeting about how to accomplish exactly this objective.]

Closer to home, AAPT meetings have a function of providing ideas and information, as
well as the main purpose of schmoozing with old friends and making new ones.


Papers are presented (always in lecture format, which we know to be dead), to an
audience which may be missing one or more additional papers at the same time. This is
not exactly an efficient operation, and it (passing along ideas and information) would be
improved if all papers were available on line.

</SOAPBOX>

Mike

===============================================================
Mike Moloney http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~moloney
moloney@nextwork.rose-hulman.edu
Dept of Physics & Applied Optics (812) 877 8302
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology Terre Haute, IN 47803

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