David,
The answer to your question is, Because this ("We would
cancel")
is what librarians say when asked the following question:
If all
the articles in final form from a subscription-based journal
were
available for free, would you continue to subscribe to the
journal?
There are important words in that question: "all"
and "final
form."
I really cannot understand how you can persist in insisting
that
people will pay for what they can get for free.
Businesspeople talk to their customers.
Joe Esposito
On 3/20/07, David Prosser <david.prosser bodley.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> The Beckett and Inger paper 'Self-Archiving and Journal
> Subscriptions: Co-existence or Competition?' gives us a
> hypothesis (p. 11 of the summary paper):
>
> 'In the extreme case of 100% availability of content on
the
> institutional archives and a 24-month embargo, still
nearly
> half the market for subscription journals has
disappeared.'
>
> So, if 100% of the journal's content is freely
available the
> journal will, all other factors being equal, lose a
massive
> proportion of its subscription base. Decreasing the
embargo to
> zero increases the predicted fall in the market from
50% to
> approximately 70%.
>
> Can we test this hypothesis? If we look at journals
hosted by
> HighWire Press we can see that a large number make
papers
> freely available after 6, 12, or 24 months (see
> http:/
/highwire.stanford.edu/lists/freeart.dtl). For these
> journals, the final versions of papers are made
available to
> all. If the prediction made by Beckett and Inger was
true then
> these journals should have started to haemorrhaging
> subscriptions following the opening-up of the archives.
Is
> there any evidence that they have?
>
> Back in 2005, John Sack wrote, in a history of HighWire
Press
> (http://www.ingentaconnect.com/cont
ent/alpsp/lp/2005/00000018/00000002/art00008)
>
> After several years of content was online, Nick
Cozzarelli
> (PNAS), Bob Simoni (JBC) and Michael Held (Rockefeller
> University Press) presented a concept of 'free back
issues' to
> their colleague HighWire publishers. Their view was
that
> librarians and researchers were subscribing because
they needed
> access to absolutely current issues, and that there was
> significant educational benefit in issues that were
months old.
> They proposed that back issues (6 or 12 months old) be
made
> freely available to the public to support educational
uses, and
> expected that this would have no significant effect on
> subscription count. Gradually more and more journals
came to
> this same belief, and today the programme comprises the
largest
> archive of free full-text research articles that we
know of:
> over 825,000 articles from about 220 journals.
>
> There does not appear to be a mass retreat from the
free back
> file programme - are publisher sanguine in the face of
50%
> declines in their subscription base?
>
> Of course, most of the HighWire hosted journals
offering free
> backfiles are in the biological and medical fields, but
as the
> summary does not break-down the response of librarians
by
> subject area, it is difficult to tell what predictions
are
> being made in these fields.
>
> So, we have a hypothesis and we have some test-cases.
If the
> HighWire-hosted journals are managing to survive
despite the
> predicted massive falls in subscriptions they should
have
> experience, why should we take the Beckett and Inger
study as a
> credible warning of what might happen as self-archiving
become
> more widespread?
>
> David C Prosser PhD
> Director
> SPARC Europe
> E-mail: david.prosserbodley.ox.ac.uk
> http://www.sparceurope.org
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