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Much of the research reported in JASA is not supported by any organization or perhaps only tacitly supported in a sense that the employing organization is all right with such research being done by its employees, providing it does not interfere with the performance of duties that are given high- er priority. The membership of the ASA is fully in accord with the premise that all good research in acoustics should be published. However, the costs of fully subsidizing the publication process and of maintaining perpetually acces- sible Web sites is out of bounds with what one is nominally willing to pay in professional society dues.
Partial Solution Involving Professional Organizations and Libraries
The idea that all authors, their sponsors, or their institutions pay for all the costs of publication and of ensuring perpet- ual access seems extremely unreasonable. The stance that the ASA has is that it must continue to charge libraries and institutions for subscriptions, and it is necessary that some part of the content of JASA should not be free access. lf all of the content were open access, then the revenues from sub- scriptions would cease. The scope of JASA and the mission of the Society preclude the collection of sufficient income solely from the authors, at least to the extent that the general overall quality of JASA should continue without consider- able deterioration in quality.
What follows below are a list of suggestions, paraphrased partly from letters written by the current author (some in collaboration with other members of the Society) that were sent to government agencies and to international scientific organizations.
(1)Professional societies, separately and/or collectively, should advise libraries on the relative quality, value, reasonableness of pricing structure, and importance of various scientific journals to which the libraries might subscribe.
(2) Governments and foundations should partially subsidize libraries that provide access to scientific journals. To a major extent, this is already being done, but subsidiz- ing libraries is a feasible thing for governments to do to ensure that the cost to its citizens to access scientific re- search is reasonable. Foundations should realize that the goal of having an informed public in regard to scientific research results is worthwhile.
(3) All publicly subsidized libraries should extend their pa- tronage beyond those people directly associated with their institutions, possibly for a reasonable fee, so that nonaffiliated persons interested in scientific research can have access to scientific journals.
(4) Professional societies should develop standards for peer review, and an impartial accrediting body should be established to critique scientific journals as to whether they meet those standards.
(5) Professional societies should draw extensively on their membership, so that the peer-review process associated with acceptance for publication in their journals can be carried out with reasonable cost.
(6) A tier of standards, possibly broken down by subjects, should be developed for libraries, so that potential pay- ing patrons will have some basis for assessing whether the library’s holdings meet their needs for accessing sci- entific journals.
(7) Prospective authors should be advised which journals are accredited in regard to peer review and which have been selected for subscription by libraries.
In conclusion, I pessimistically state that there is no reason to expect these suggestions to ever be carried out, but it gen- erally does no harm to make suggestions and perhaps this article will stimulate some discussion. Nevertheless, I am confident that no matter what happens in the external world, the commitment of the ASA membership will continue to ensure that ASA and its publication activity will survive.
Biosketch
Allan Pierce received a PhD from MIT in 1962 and joined the ASA the same year. Among many activities associated with acoustics and its various subfields carried out over the past 53 years, he served as editor in chief of the Society from 1999 through 2014. He is present-
ly “sort of” retired and lives on Cape Cod. (Note from the Acoustics Today editor: a much longer discussion of Allan’s extraordinary career and contributions as scholar, mentor, and EIC can be found in the spring 2015 issue of this maga- zine.)
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