andssl wrote:Dinogami, I agree with you, but I believe that Tanteidan fears the problems derived from piracy. Spiral-bound book (BOS and OUSA make books in this way) can be a kind of solution.
Oh, I agree completely...and the problem is more concentrated simply because JOAS is so small. However, the advent of electronic publication is very rapidly making traditional, hard-copy publishing more difficult. I know very little about publishing outside of scientific papers, and I acknowledge that things may be quite different, but in general, publishers are now facing, in the face of electronic publishing and distribution, the exact same problem that the music industry faced in the face of electronic publishing and distribution, starting most famously with Napster. In the end, the music industry finally learned that embracing electronic publishing and distribution was wiser -- and more profitable -- than trying to fight it. I recall reading that rates of piracy actually went down after music producers openly embraced inexpensive sources of electronic distribution, like iTunes, than when they were trying to sue everyone left and right to prevent piracy. Not that piracy doesn't continue to be a problem...it's just less of a problem than anyone thought. Even DVDs are increasingly including "digital copies" along with their traditional DVDs -- one might think initially that this would cause rampant piracy, but as far as I know (and please correct me if I'm wrong!), this hasn't happened.
Scientific publishers, like Elsevier, Wiley, Springer, Cambridge, and others, are facing this same problem presently with respect to papers in technical journals. In paleontology -- my field -- there is a fairly significant demand among amateurs for access to those papers. But such papers are traditionally available only via very exorbitant individual subscriptions (often far more than JOAS!) or via academic libraries that have subscriptions (which can exceed $5000, and often far more, for one year!), and typically (and increasingly) only students and faculty have access through those libraries. The publishers
do make the papers available for individual purchase and download...but typically at a cost ranging anywhere from $20-$50
per article. In addition, scientists themselves often have to shell out page charges in order to have their own articles published in those journals! Scientists with grants usually have funds set aside for that, but those are few and far between compared to those working with their own funds.
Between the exorbitant subscription rates and/or access fees the publishers charge, and their increasing stranglehold on who can get access, many in the scientific community are turning to open access journals instead. These are journals that anyone can access for free at any time, period. There are costs involved: scientists submitting papers are requested to contribute to the publication of their papers if they can, but the rewards -- far greater distribution of their work -- outstrips the costs. The traditional publishing industry has yet to respond, possibly because the open-access movement is, as yet, too small to pose a major threat, but it is growing rapidly and eventually traditional publishers will have to let go of their traditional models in order to stay alive and attract scientists back to their products. (There are further issues with self-publishing and the increasingly blurry distinction between journal articles and blogs, but we needn't go into all that here.)
As I mentioned above, I fully acknowledge that JOAS is such a small organization that they have much more to lose, proportionately, than a giant publishing house, and I also acknowledge that piracy hurts small organizations like JOAS than anyone else. But that's why I suggested that PDF copies be made available very cheaply after some reasonable amount of time from the initial publication of the hard copy -- 1-2 years seems fine (and, indeed, a few of the big publishing houses, or, at least, journals, make their scientific papers available for free after a year). I suspect that most of us would still buy the hard copies as soon as they come out, and hopefully that would recover the production costs (I'd be interested to know if JOAS does indeed break even, or even make a profit, on the convention books and
Tanteidan magazines); after that, the risk of losing money due to piracy is less, and again may be further lessened by making PDFs available very cheaply via, say, PayPal.
I'm not proclaiming to be an expert on any of this; merely sharing my observations from within the scientific community. I'm certainly interested in other points of view for comparison, particularly if anyone here is in the publishing field!
