----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- Thanks, Mike Robison My first article on the subject of the serials crisis was titled "The publish or perish boomerang". The basic idea in this article was very simple: "The greater the production of scientific articles, the lesser the accesabilty to this scientific knowledge." In my Dutch articles I discussed the common pool problems of the library's, the copyrights issue and the monopoly power of the publishers at length. My (modest an open for discussion) conclusion is, that it is not monopoly power, nor the transfer of copyrights to to the publishers, which account for the incredible prices of academic journals. It is the organization of our libraries which does the trick. Be honest: we say to our librarians: "This journal is really important", and we have no idea about the cost. Mike, the issue with books is not similar to that with journals. Compare e.g. the price of an issue of 'Economic Letters" with the price of a wonderful book:' A Bibliographical Dictionary of Woman Economists'. (Edited by Robert Dimand a.o., published by Edward Elgar, I am in it, thus highly recomended.) This fine Elgar book, would you like to substitute it on your private book shelves for a single copy of Economic Letters? I do not think that Mike is right when he says that there are only two ways to combat the serials crisis. His first suggestion is to boycott Reed Elsevier, Kluwer (the Dutch companies) and I could add some more (MCB is number one in price in price level, but Blackwell is number one in price increase.) I do not understand Mike's second suggestion. He wrote " the other international scientific publishing conglomerate is much better about their pricing and their copying rules are less draconian then Kluwer's." The problem is not, in my opinion, monopoly power. This is far to easy. Monopoly power depends on the willingness to pay. My concern is primarily the communication among scolars in the history of economic thought. I worry about our journals. Are our journals really accesible to everyone who is interested in e.g. "Marshall's own views on industrial districts"? I really would like our societies to put a new and free journal on the web. A real international one. I do not think that this is the solution to the serials crisis. But I really think that a journal like this is in a nick of time an invaluable source of reference for every economist who realizes that intellectual history is important for what he is doing. Henk Willem Plasmeijer ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]