It would surely be disingenuous for OA advocates to maintain
that
the widespread and free availability of all articles in
their
final from could not lead to the widespread cancellation of
subscriptions. This 'liberation' of over-stretched library
budgets is a secondary benefit from the arrival of OA for
research articles (the primary benefit being the increased
access
to research). Only an extreme form of double-think could
lead one
to suppose that subscriptions to highly priced journals
could or
should continue.
It is a remarkable feature of the current situation that
most
professional publishers have sanctioned 'Green' practices on
institutional archival deposit. A cynic from the OA side
might
say that this has been agreed/conceded because the subtle
differences and discriminations which the publishers make in
their allowances for deposit (embargo period, version to be
used,
type of institution which may be empowered with deposit etc)
means that the 'Green' field will always be in a chaotic
situation -- providing unpredictable open access. So the
Green
road does not pose any significant threat to the continued
flow
of subscriptions.
A cynic from the Toll Access side may say that this
allowance
does not even need to be deliberately gerrymandered by
creating
shades of Green, all that is needed is for the scheme of
Institutional Repositories to be adequately disaggregated.
If
1,000's of universities and research institutions are each
to
maintain their own repository with the consistency that they
currently maintain their other web services, we will still
need
added value aggregators. Google may clear up some of the
chaos
but there will still be some role for aggregation and
linking
services which provide the reliable delivery and scientific
relevance of the traditional published journal. For such a
Toll
Access cynic, 'Mandated Open Access' is an even better idea.
If
it is mandated (ugh) and yet reluctantly implemented or
poorly
implemented, during this period the existing scholarly
journals
charabanc can roll on as before. Perhaps the whole OA
movement
will meanwhile fizzle out?
I have a suspicion that such a Toll Access cynic might be
rubbing
his/her hands at the way the debate is moving, or not
moving.
Adam
On 3/21/07, Joseph Esposito <espositoj gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.prosserbodley.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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