SPARC white paper

["Joseph J. Esposito" <espositoj@xxxxxxx>]

I was pleased to see the link to the SPARC white paper on reconstituting the
process of scholarly communications.  Does it not concern anyone, however,
that the paper apparently reflects no awareness of what a publisher actually
does?  The paper seems to think of publishing as production (no) and
distribution (no).  It's really about identifying opportunities and
filtering raw content.  By analogy, publishing is to the process of
scholarly communications what the admissions office is to an elite
undergraduate institution.  Without someone whose job it is to say no,
reconstituted communications schemes will be awash in material (as though we
weren't already, but it can and will get worse), which will in turn give
rise to new entities, whose task it will be to guide selection.  We may not
call these new entities publishers, but that's what they will be.

Nothing I have written here is in defense of the price-gouging,
anti-innovative business strategies of some leading publishers of academic
journals.  One can defend the role of publishers without asserting that any
of the current practitioners are doing a good job.

Joe

Joseph J. Esposito
Portable CEO
613 Spring St.
Santa Cruz, CA 95060
espositoj@xxxxxxx
(831) 425-1143
(831) 254-0306 mobile