tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post116405409422932086..comments2024-03-17T08:30:21.129+00:00Comments on Open and Shut?: Open Access: Beyond Selfish InterestsRichard Poynderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05433823131339077354noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-1164151629765558702006-11-21T23:27:00.000+00:002006-11-21T23:27:00.000+00:00Solving the Article Accessibility Problem Moots th...<B>Solving the Article Accessibility Problem Moots the Journal Affordability Problem</B><BR/><BR/>On the premise that the Article Accessibility problem is solved, there is no longer any Journal Affordability problem left. Let us suppose (and hope) that researchers' institutions and funders soon <A HREF="http://www.eprints.org/signup/fulllist.php" REL="nofollow">mandate</A>, at long last, that their employees/fundees (or their assigns) do the <A HREF="http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10688/" REL="nofollow">pathetically small number of keystrokes</A> it takes to self-archive all their final, peer-reviewed drafts in their own <A HREF="http://archives.eprints.org/" REL="nofollow">Institutional Repositories</A> immediately upon acceptance for publication. <BR/><BR/>That will generate 100% Open Access (OA). <BR/><BR/>Once it is no longer true that any would-be user is unable to access an article because his institution cannot afford the journal in which it happens to have been published, there is no longer any Accessibility Problem. Librarians' annual agony over which journals to keep and which to cancel within the constraints of their finite serials budgets (never anywhere near enough to afford all published journals) will be over. They can purchase as many as they can afford from among those journals for which their users indicate that they would still quite like to have them in-house (whether out of desire for the paper edition or for online add-ons, or out of habit, sentimentality, loyalty, civic-mindedness or superstition): Nothing important hinges on the choice or the outcome once it is sure that no potential user is any longer doing without (hence no research or researcher is any longer losing impact because of access denial).<BR/><BR/>Ever to have thought otherwise is simply to have <A HREF="http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/9939/01/impact.html" REL="nofollow">conflated</A> the Accessibility and Affordability problems: Accessibility was always what made Affordability a problem at all.<BR/><BR/>And before the inevitable, tedious question is asked about how the essential costs of peer-reviewed journal publishing will continue to be covered if/when subscriptions become unsustainable, please consult the <A HREF="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399we152.htm" REL="nofollow">prophets</A>,<BR/><BR/>(Publishing will adapt, cutting the costs of the inessentials, downsizing to the essentials, possibly right down to peer-review service-provision alone; those irreducible essential costs will then be covered on the OA cost-recovery model, out of a fraction of the annual institutional windfall savings from the institutional journal cancellations. Till that income stream is released, however, OA Publishing is OA-Publicatio Praecox...)<BR/><BR/>Stevan Harnad<BR/><A HREF="http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/" REL="nofollow">http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/</A>Stevan Harnadhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04435601271838394033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-1164114473088785152006-11-21T13:07:00.000+00:002006-11-21T13:07:00.000+00:00To respond to one point: "If OA publishing cannot ...To respond to one point: "If OA publishing cannot solve the affordability problem then what's in it for librarians?"<BR/><BR/>In fact, there are plenty of reasons why open access publishing can be expected to bring down the cost of publishing research by increasing competitiveness and transparency. The recent <A HREF="http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/06/414" REL="nofollow">EC report on science publishing</A> calls attention to the lack of transparency within the current publishing system, and suggests that it is part of the reason for high journal prices.<BR/><BR/><BR/>Article processing charges make completely transparent what a publisher is charging for the service of peer review and publication. In contrast, subscription prices generally conceal the true overall cost of the publication process.<BR/><BR/>In some cases, however, further information about the cost of traditional journals is available, and it tends to confirm that charges levied by open access publishers such as BioMed Central are very reasonable.<BR/><BR/>For example, Oxford University Press <A HREF="http://www.oxfordjournals.org/news/Presentation%20slides" REL="nofollow"><BR/>recently reported</A> that as a subscription journal, Nucleic Acids Research's income per article published was $4224 in 2003.<BR/><BR/>Since the journal's move to open access in 2004, it is reported that the journal's revenue per article has declined to $3622 in 2005, reinforcing the suggestion that open access may lead to downward pressure on costs.<BR/><BR/>Also, it was reported at a meeting earlier this year that FEBS receives $8500 (!) of subscription revenue for every article it publishes in its 2 journals (FEBS Journal and FEBS Letters)<BR/><BR/> <A HREF="http://iospress.metapress.com/link.asp?id=5d9e03mqyllnnrru" REL="nofollow">Publishing constraints experienced by a large European scientific society</A> <BR/> Willy Stalmans<BR/> <I>Information Services & Use</I> 26 (2006) 97–101 (Special Issue: APE2006 Academic <BR/> Publishing in Europe: The Role of Information in Science and Society)<BR/> <BR/><BR/><BR/>For the research community to have to pay $4000 (or even $8500) in return for the service of peer review and publication is indeed poor value for money. In comparison, BioMed Central's article processing charges (typically in the $1000-$2000 range) offer excellent value, and as more and more authors switch to open access journals, there are serious savings to be made.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com