Information Research Weblog

I thought I'd explained the reason: it is essentially ethical - why should commercial interests profit from the free labour of others? Heaven knows, commercial publishers have done so long enough through the scholarly publishing busines!

There is also an economic reason Information Research is produced entirely through voluntary effort, but that effort has costs - of software, of server maintenance, of the opportunity cost of my time and the time of others, etc., etc. Any unrewarded commercial use of the papers published in Information Research removes the opportunity for income. This is why we published 'Introducting information management' (edited by Maceviciute and Wilson, Facet Publishing, 2005) and directed that the royalties, otherwise payable to the editors and authors, should be paid to Lund University Libraries and this is why any income from our arrangement with Ebsco will also be paid to Lund University Libraries.

Simply because authors give their work freely to the journal, which makes it freely accessible to the world at large, does not mean that we should forego any possibility of income to support the journal.