Letters to the Editor
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"The Money": @ ktwdawg
I don't think anybody questions whether industries lobby, or whether a large publisher has $13,000 to give away to a campaign. That's not a lot of money, and it's hardly proof of anything. Nor does it justify tarring an entire industry with one brush, just because little is widely known about the industry. Publishers don't have the money for "green" campaigns like Chevron's, so few people may be aware of the diversity within it. (Yes, I'm prepared to defend that statement too.)
For one thing, we don't know whether Inhofe changed his position after receiving it. For another, that $3 million could be less than 1% of Reed Elsevier's profits, for all we know. And how many other senators got money? Maybe none. Compare with other industries' well-known and lavish lobbying campaigns.
I think there's an obsession with "lobbying" here, and I hear the sound of an ax being ground. 2 more notes:
(1) What's the edition model of publishing got to do with open access to new research? Sounds like you don't like the edition model. Fine---but then you seem happy to attack the industry for publishing NEW material. Is this rational?
(2) Open access doesn't necessarily have anything to do with free journals. It includes the funding of repositories for "unrefined" or even raw manuscripts as well as "free journals." Because it hasn't been specified exactly what Inhofe "gutted," I personally have no idea what it was that RE "paid" him to do. See this link for a good overview of open access: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm