March 3, 2003

Speaker to Discuss Bush's Economic Plan March 10
Peter F. Fisher, under secretary of the U.S. Treasury for domestic policy, will present the RBS Greenwich Capital Economic Seminar Series lecture on March 10 in the Rome Commons Ballroom, beginning at 1:15 p.m.

Peter F. Fisher

He will discuss President Bush's economic plan. As under secretary, Fisher is the senior advisor to the treasury secretary and the deputy secretary on all aspects of domestic finance. His office is responsible for formulating policy and legislation in the areas of financial institutions, public debt management, capital markets, government financial management services, federal lending, fiscal affairs, government-sponsored enterprises, and community development. He also serves on the board of Securities Investor Protection Corp.

The RBS Greenwich Capital Economic Seminar Series, which is sponsored by the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, has included lectures by Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve; Lawrence Summers, former U.S. Treasury secretary; Franklin D. Raines, chairman of Fannie Mae; and Gov. John G. Rowland.

Crisis in Scholarly Publishing to be Topic of Open Forum
Two leading speakers on the topic of scholarly publishing will give presentations during an open forum titled, "Publish and Perish: The Crisis in Scholarly Communications," on Wednesday, March 12, from 4 to 6 p.m., in the Konover Auditorium of the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center.

Jean-Claude Guédon

Heather Dalterio Joseph

Jean-Claude Guédon, a professor of comparative literature at the University of Montreal, will speak on "Scientific Plutocracy and Open Access: A Report from the Frontlines." Guédon is the founder of Surfaces (1991), the oldest Canadian electronic scholarly journal still in existence. The author of many papers on both theoretical and practical issues of electronic publishing, he serves on the steering committees of the Canadian National Site Licensing Project and the Digital Library of Electronic Theses and Dissertations.

Heather Dalterio Joseph, president and chief operating officer for BioOne, a collaborative online publishing venture in the biological sciences, will speak on "Emerging Alternatives in Scholarly Publishing." While at the American Astronomical Society, she helped create one of the first fully electronic journals, The Astrophysical Journal Letters, and more recently, developed a system to peer review and publish multimedia content in the journal, Molecular Biology of the Cell. Many academic journals, once the province of professional societies and university presses, have come under the control of large for-profit publishers and conglomerates, which have raised subscription rates dramatically. Electronic journals, once thought to be the solution, are commanding even higher prices than traditional print journals, despite the lower costs to produce and distribute them.

The rising costs of scholarly journal subscriptions has far outstripped universities' ability to pay. Book budgets have been squeezed as well, as universities shift book budgets toward maintaining scientific journal subscriptions.

The talks will be followed by an open discussion. For more information, go to this website.

The forum is hosted by the Chancellor's Library Advisory Committee and the University Libraries.