100% Self-Archiving and Journal Subscriptions: a critique

David does hit the nail on the head. Even if librarians
would be 
able to afford paying for a subscription to material that's 
openly and freely available elsewhere, its not realistic to 
expect them to engage in this kind of charity, and even if
they 
wish to, they will not be allowed to by their masters. 
Some, 
perhaps, can afford to sit back and wait. Publishers can't,
but 
I'm not sure if librarians (esp. serials librarians) can
afford 
to just sit and wait, either. David may agree. After all, he
put 
a 'perhaps' in his sentence. Their role is one of
intermediary, 
and doesn't full OA, with subscriptions cancelled, seriously

disintermediate them?

Jan Velterop

----- Original Message ----

From: David Goodman <dgoodmanPrinceton.EDU>
To: liblicense-llists.yale.edu
Sent: Wednesday, 22 November, 2006 8:44:16 PM
Subject: 100% Self-Archiving and Journal Subscriptions: a
critique

I am very pleased to see Stevan's long-awaited agreement
about 100%.

The next question, asked by the Ware survey but not Beckett
& 
Inger, is what will happen at 95% and at 90%, which are
levels, 
which is practice can be reached by mandatory
self-archiving, as 
CERN has demonstrated.

It seems Stevan would make a rather conservative librarian,
for 
about half of libraries would cancel earlier than 100%. Ware

found (question 15) that 52 percent of libraries would
cancel by 
somewhere between 90 and 99%.

But that too is not the exact situation that will be posed
in 
Areal life, which is: if at 90% OA, libraries see half of
their 
similar libraries cancelling, would they cancel as well?
And, 
since libraries do not make the decision how much money they
can 
spend, if libary funders -- institutions, boards,
legislatures -- 
see half of comparable libraries canceling, would they
continue 
to allot money for the subscriptions that some libraries
might 
nonetheless want to continue? (This has been sometimes
referred 
to as the tipping-point problem.)

Of course, we are far from this situation, but I pity the 
publisher who does not start realistic planning for it now. 
Stevan, and I, don't need to, and neither perhaps do 
libraries--we can await the event. Publishers can't.

David Goodman