Why are science magazines so clueless about electronic delivery?
I subscribe to the print edition of Scientific American, but that doesn’t give me access to the articles in electronic form (even though I’m registered on their web site as a print subscriber). They require I pay a second subscription to access the same content that I’ve already paid for (I couldn’t cut and paste Michael Shermer’s comments, above, so wound up retyping and paraphrasing – both sub-optimal practices). New Scientist is even worse: there is no way to get their electronic content without also receiving the print magazine. Period. Given the carbon footprint, not to mention the cost, of printing and delivering hundreds of thousands (possibly millions, in SciAm’s case) of magazines, you’d have thought these science- and tech-savvy pubs would be leading the charge into the networked world. I am quite happy to pay both pubs whatever the going freight is to sustain their editorial operations – indeed I’ve been a life-long subscriber to SciAm. Both publications’ editorial pages cer
