Len Pattenden wrote:
>It seems some Universities in the UK are having problems with Nature
>subscriptions similar to what we had here in Oz. Are the clowns at Nature
>so powerful or are they just so bloody stupid? They also manage to do
>something to my acrobat reader so I can't save the files but must print
>them or make some god-aweful HTML link (or reconstruct the paper with
>figures again in Word). I assume this is to protect their copyright and
>stop me sending papers on to other people (though it doesn't really do
>this). It has another "advantage" of stuffing up my electronic journal
>collection.
>I suspect that publishers of journals (especially popular ones like Nature)
may well gain as many subscriptions as they lose as a result of "illegal"
copying of articles (because of the publicity that this brings
automatically), but their commercial people are so stuck in an outdated way
of thinking that they are not able to make this analysis. It's interesting
that some of the more intelligent journals (like J. Biol. Chem., if I'm
not mistaken) now give completely free access to their web sites. I don't
believe for a moment they lose money by doing this.
Actually, what puzzles me more about Nature and Science is the tremendous
amount they must spend on mailing out special offers. I once received seven
(yes, seven) offers from Science in a single day.
athel
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Athel Cornish-Bowden
athel at ibsm.cnrs-mrs.frhttp://bip.cnrs-mrs.fr/bip10/homepage.htm
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