The Paper House of Cards (And Why It Is Taking So Long To Collapse)

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Description/Abstract

The remaining cost of serial publication, once expenses are scaled down to the electronic-only level, is low enough to render the interests of everyone -- the author, the reader, the funder of the author's research, the university supporting the author, and, yes, the electronic learned serial publishers -- better served by recovering those costs and a fair profit at the author's end, in the form of page charges (paid for by the funders of the author's research and/or the university employing him to do the research, both co-beneficiaries, with the author, of the widest possible unimpeded distribution of the research reported), rather than by any version of reader-end payment, the latter depending as it does, on restricting access to what the author and his supporters would all prefer to see as free for all.