1 Mar 2008 01:27
Sustainability in publishing: print vs. open source journals
John M. McMahon <mcmahon <at> LEMOYNE.EDU>
2008-03-01 00:27:00 GMT
2008-03-01 00:27:00 GMT
Here's some food for thought .... IHE 2/29/08: "Journal boxes" "From a sustainability point of view, it’s no contest. Digital is good. Paper is bad. End of story." [snip] "The print journal evolved at a time when the most efficient mechanism for sharing information was ink on paper. That’s no longer the case. Information now travels (and is stored, waiting to travel) far more efficiently in digital form. Paper doesn’t weigh a lot, but electronic ones and zeros weigh even less and so are transported quicker and more cheaply. Paper is still useful for the one article a reader wants to pore over and mark up, but it doesn’t have to be consumed to mail each subscriber a full copy of each article (s)he has no interest in reading. And paper is a tremendously harmful product to the environment. I don’t know what sort of paper stock most journals are printed on (although, for the price many of them charge, it ought to be pure silk!), but think of a single sheet of 8.5″ x 11″ printer/copier paper. Production of each individual sheet consumes 13 ounces of fresh water. Production of each ream puts 8.4 kg (about 18.5 lbs.) of CO2 into the atmosphere. The water weighs way more than the paper does (no surprise there), but even the CO2 weighs more!!" More:(Continue reading)
> ... but on his subject-line.
Thought I got that right. Should have been "open access" not "open source"
-- shows how little I know ... or how easy it is to fall into oft-heard and
familiar phrasing when typing.
Still, TL is not alone. E.g., read the opening paragraph:
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