Sent on behalf of Prof. Hector Rubinstein, Chairman of the
J-Journals
Executive Editorial Committee.
Ms. Ann Okerson
Dr. Gene Sprouse
Dr. Joseph Serene
This is a collective answer to your reactions to the SCOAP3
proposal.
I am an active High Energy and Cosmology theoretical
physicist
and together with Loriano Bonora and Daniele Amati the
creator of
the Journal of High Energy Physics (JHEP, jhep.sissa.it) and
later of other journals such as the Journal of Cosmology and
Astroparticle Physics (JCAP, jcap.sissa.it), the Journal of
Instrumentation (JINST, jinst.sissa.it) and the Journal of
Statistical Mechanics (JSTAT, jstat.sissa.it)
I first address the concerns of Ms. Okerson.
> When we met recently with a leader of the SCOAP3
initiative, he
> mentioned that one of the incentives for libraries to
join is
> that the combined SCOAP3 group of subscribers will be
large
> enough to negotiate with the publishers and to reduce
the
> overall subscription fees we pay by as much as 2/3.
This seemed
> hugely optimistic to me, as none of the publishers
listed
> below, whatever their $/article, is making anywhere
approaching
> 2/3 surplus. And, in fact, societies like the APS note
that
> they have "no fat to trim."
I think that the answers to all her questions are simple and
some are
implicitly given in the e-mail from Dr. Sprouse.
Indeed, at the end, Open Access is a question that boils
down to
giving access to every researcher to peer reviewed
scientific
material, at reasonable cost. If you look at the Table in
the
email from Dr. Sprouse it is no accident that the two
non-profit
journals, Phys. Rev. D and JHEP, cost about the same and 20
times
less than Nuclear Physics B! How can you say that costs can
not
be cut by 2/3?. No one is asking to lower the price of JHEP
or
Phys. Rev. D., but just to force the commercial companies to
be
reasonable. (http://en.wikip
edia.org/wiki/Elsevier) tells me that
Reeds-Elsevier made 1.06 billion dollars in profits last
year.
> Anyhow, this led to the SCOAP staff's statement that it
should
> be possible for publishers to bring their costs down
that much,
> through additional savings in their publication costs,
and the
> SCOAP3 negotiations will push publishers to achieve
these. In
> turn, we suggested that if such low cost, high quality
could be
> achieved, it might be useful for SCOAP3/CERN to
demonstrate
> that by starting a journal that proves the concept.
The second point raised by Ms. Okerson is really surprising.
Such
a journal has existed for 10 years now. It is JHEP! It is
one of
the largest in size in High Energy Physics, has the highest
impact factor of all physics journals, and the largest
number of
most cited papers. It costs about 15% of Nuclear Physics B.
So
why is Ms. Okerson making this uneducated statement?
Now to the points raised by Dr. Sprouse
> To raise $3.7M, the US part of the $14M of consortium
funding,
> SCOAP3 is negotiating with US institutions involved in
HEP
> research. We estimate that only about 1/3 of the US
> subscription revenue for Physical Review D comes from
these
> institutions, so if only they are involved, each must
be asked
> to triple what it now pays for PRD
The idea of OA is to shift the cost of peer review (which is
the
present value of journals) to the authors. As the SCOAP3
model
implies, American-affiliated scholars are the authors of a
quarter of accepted articles in High Energy Physics and this
should be their share. Your analysis of how these costs will
be
distributed is misleading. The amount paid by American
libraries
would be for ALL journals. To say that it is an increase on
the
cost of Phys. Rev. D. by a factor of 3 it is not correct. If
the
3.7 million $ which SCOAP3 identifies as the
"fair" US share are
raised, they will pay for all High Energy Physics journals.
So
libraries will indeed be paying much less than today, while
Phys.
Rev. D. will have the same income. Sure enough, OA must
propagate
to all branches of physics and hopefully science so that the
system will be simple. The subscription model may not be bad
but
has been distorted by some publishers who ask prices far
beyond
cost, taking advantage of a monopolistic situation. It is
our
duty to return these sums for research and education as it
was
the case until the 1940's. If publishers are forced to
charge
what APS or SISSA Medialab charge for their excellent
journals it
will be something of great value. There are other problems
with
private publishers (I was unfortunately the main Editor of
High
Energy Physics for Elsevier for many years). In a nutshell,
they
are not interested in science but in dividends. I hope you
will
reconsider your position.
Prof. Hector Rubinstein
Stockholm and Uppsala University,
Chairman of the J-Journals Executive Editorial Committee
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