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The Academics Thread


Pariah

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The problem with A&A is that their subscription rates for non-European individuals and institutions are prohibitively high.  Great science appears in it, but many US libraries have dropped it.  Several years ago, an institutional library subscription was $30,000 annually outside of the EU.

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Well, as I understand it, the page charges are gratis for European authors, so that major source of operating income isn't there.  The US journals (well, the AAS's journals) have lower subscription costs, but they do have page charges (i.e., the authors' institutions must pay for publish a paper).  I think the AAS journals went to electronic only publication a couple of years ago, also.

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I have thoughts about having the Aussie government covering some of the costs to reduce them. The idea is that science and academia is a public good and therefore justifies government expenditure. 

 

A bit bit like how non profits receive government grants to operate. Peer reviewed journals could also operate as non profits. That gives the journals independence from any government bias. 

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A&A's history makes this murkier; it started IIRC in 1970 as the amalgamation of almost all the European nations' national astronomy journals ... not the UK's or Russia/USSR's, but nearly all the others, and those were all governmental operations to some extent.  What deals were made in doing this I don't know, but that history undoubtedly carries forward some arrangements that will be difficult to alter without risking the loss of all government support along the way.

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Five hours of panic-paced editing today, because for some unknown reason I was not told that the lab interface software was changed last summer.  And whatever moron on that development team is responsible for the stupidest zooming mechanics I have ever seen ... guys, that problem was solved back in the early 1980s.  Report to the Chipper Room for rendering into bacteriological growth medium.

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