Dear TC6 members,
You may remember that in our last meeting we agreed to prepare a set of conditions for the new publication contract. In the meantime I received the following proposal from the TC5 chairman, which I submit to your consideration for comments.
The idea is to have a common proposal from every TC for the new publication contract.
Please let me know until June 20th your comments on this proposal and additional points to be included from our side. I will then prepare a final position paper from TC6 or simply support the TC5 one.
Best regards
Augusto
Augusto,
A few comments on the near-term question (the new publication contract for 2004) are attached (below). In the long run, however, it is clear that we cannot survive by relying on revenue from the publication of books. It doesn't matter what the books cost, or what the "surplus" percentage is - the simple fact is that publishing technical conference papers in hardcover bound volumes is part of the past, not the future. This is going away, and TC6 will go away with it if we don't plan now for a different future.
- Lyman
============================================================================
Comments on the TC5 plan:
1. Technical papers that are not available on-line do not exist. The first requirement of any new publication agreement must be that every paper is available on-line. At least the abstract, keyword list (if any), and references/citations must be in the clear (not blocked by any subscription or per-paper fee restrictions).
2. If we decide that we cannot give free access to the full papers, the publication agreement should include a well-constructed mechanism for charging on either a subscription (digital library model) or per-paper basis. I have a strong preference for subscriptions; assuming that papers are available from the authors' web sites for free (Arun's suggestion), the only thing that would motivate someone to pay for papers would be the convenience of using a digital library.
3. I honestly don't think it matters what the cost of the hard-copy books is, as very few people buy them today (other than those who "buy" them by paying the fee to attend a conference), and this number will surely be even smaller by 2004. It would be much better to have a publication agreement for the production of a well-designed CD for each conference, containing all of the conference papers (and potentially other material). This would be more valuable for the conference attendees as a take-away, and those who do not attend the conference will find the papers on-line.
============================================================================