On Wed, 19 Sep 2007, Sandy Thatcher wrote:
> Ah, yes, and if you'll remember our prior discussion
about open
> access, Stevan, I warned that just this
"success" might be the
> "tipping point" to drive a host of commercial
and society
> publishers out of the business of journal publishing.
One
> "tipping point" causes another? Witness, as
partial proof, the
> reaction of STM publishers represented by the PRISM
initiative.
> I read that as a warning that, if the government forces
a
> change in their business model, they may just walk away
from
> the business. I assume you wouldn't consider that a bad
thing
> at all, but my question would be what kind of structure
will
> take its place and what expectations will universities
have of
> their presses to pick up the slack?
What is remarkable, Sandy, is how actual empirical facts
(very
few) are being freely admixed, willy-nilly, with fact-free
speculations for which there is, and continues to be zero
empirical evidence, and, in many cases, decisive and
familiar
counterevidence, both empirical and logical.
Nothing has changed since our prior discussions except that
there
have (happily) been some more Green OA mandates (total
adopted:
32, plus 8 more further proposed mandates).
http:
//www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/
There has been no "tipping point." Just *talk*
about tipping
points, and that talk about tipping points has been going on
for
years.
There has been no one driven out of business, nor any
empirical
evidence of a trend toward being driven out of business.
Just
*talk* of being driven out of business, and that talk about
being
driven out of business has been going on for years.
And as to the "partial proof" in the form of the
STM/PRISM
"reaction" -- that very same reaction (with the
very same false,
alarmist arguments) has been voiced, verbatim, by the very
same
publisher groups (STM, AAP, ALPSP), over and over, for over
a
decade now. And they have been debunked just as often (see
long
list of links below). But that certainly hasn't been enough
to
make the publishers' anti-OA lobby cease and desist. Do you
consider the relentless repetition, at louder and louder
volume,
of exactly the same specious and evidence-free claims, to be
"proof" of anything, partial or otherwise?
And the phrase "the government forces a change in their
business
model" is just as false a description of what is
actually going
on when it is spoken in your own well-meaning words as when
it is
voiced by PRISM and Eric Dezenhall: The government is *not*
forcing a change in a business model. The funders of
tax-payer-funded research -- and, increasingly,
universities, who
are not "the government" at all! -- are insisting
that the
researchers they fund and employ make their peer-reviewed
research freely available to all would-be users online, in
line
with the purpose of conducting and funding and publishing
research in the first place.
This quite natural (and overdue) adaptation to the online
age on
the part of the research community -- Green OA -- may or may
not
lead to a transition to Gold OA publishing: no one knows
whether,
or when it will. But what is already known is that OA
itself,
whether Green or Gold, is enormously beneficial to research,
researchers, their institutions and funders, the vast
R&D
industry, and the tax-paying public that funds research and
for
whose benefit it is funded, conducted and published. (OA is
also
a secondary benefit to education and the developing world.)
So the "tipping point" for Green OA itself is an
unalloyed
benefit for everyone but the peer-reviewed journal
publishing
industry, whether or not it leads to a second tipping point
and a
transition to Gold OA.
Reality today, to repeat, is a growth in Green OA mandates,
not a
tipping point (let alone two), not a subscription decline,
not
publishers going out of business, not government pressure
toward
another publishing model.
You ask "what kind of structure will take its place and
what
expectations will universities have of their presses to pick
up
the slack?" I presume you are referring to the multiple
hypothetical conditional: *if* Green OA mandates reach the
tipping point that generates 100% Green OA, and *if* that in
turn
generates journal cancellations that reach the tipping point
that
generates a transition to Gold OA? The answer (which I have
provided many times before) is simple: The
"structure" will be
Gold OA, funded out of (a part of) the institutional
cancellation
savings.
http://www.publications.parl
iament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399we152.htm
And this is not about publishing in general, commercial,
society,
university, or otherwise. It is only about peer-reviewed
journal
publishing, and their hypothetical transition to Gold OA
under
cancellation pressure from mandated Green OA.
Stevan Harnad
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