It might be noted here that nearly 3,000 colleges in this
country
have long been "free riders" on the system of
scholarly
communication maintained by the some 85 university presses
that
the small handful of parent universities choose to support.
A
somewhat larger number actually provide funds to their
faculty to
help subsidize publication of their monographs by these
presses,
but the vast majority pay nothing into supporting this
system
beyond what they buy for their own libraries.
Recommendations
often made to spread the burden more equitably for
sustaining
this system--made, for instance, by the National Enquiry
into
Scholarly Communication back in 1979--have never been
pursued.
As others have noted on this list, one effect of OA may be
to
exacerbate this already skewed burden that the larger
research
universities will bear in supporting the whole system.
Sandy Thatcher
Penn State University Press
>This is a very interesting suggestion, and one that
dovetails
>with our thinking at BioOne. Our OA collection currently
has 8
>titles (with the addition in 2008 of 5 titles from
Conservation
>International), and we are exploring ways to grow it on
a
>sustainable basis. At present, we ask OA titles to
either submit
>their content in NLM XML or pay for their conversion and
online
>loading/QC expenses, which are not insignificant. Some
OA titles
>can cover that via author fees, but for most titles in
>organismal, environmental, and integrative biology,
author
>charges are not an option--and this is a significant
limiting
>factor. And of course, the costs of building and
maintaining a
>sophisticated hosting platform extend well beyond
conversion and
>loading charges. So we do not yet have a sustainable
model for
>OA.
>
>Recently we've been exploring the possibility of asking
>libraries to contribute to the financial sustainability
of our
>OA collection, whether as a small percentage of their
licensing
>fee to the subscribed collection(s) (allowing libraries
to
>contribute on a proportional basis), or on a per-journal
charge
>of the sort you suggest. We have discussed an opt-in
model,
>whereby subscribing libraries could agree to be invoiced
for the
>additional amount by checking a box on the subscriber
license.
>
>The problem is, as ever, that of free ridership. Would
the
>benefit to library subscribers you identify--"more
content
>accessible through one familiar, well-developed tool
with lots
>of support..." be a sufficient incentive to escape
the conundrum
>of free ridership and establish a new economic
settlement (as we
>at BioOne think of it) for scholarly publishing?
>
>We would genuinely appreciate feedback from the members
of this
>list.
>
>Mark Kurtz | Director of Business Development |
BioOne
>21 Dupont Circle Suite 800 | Washington, DC 20036
>Phone 202.296.2296 | Fax 202.872.0884 | Cell
617.669.4276
>mkurtz arl.org
>www.BioOne.org
>
>
>On Mar 19, 2008, at 9:05 PM, Heather Morrison wrote:
>
>> Vendors of aggregated databases and similar
services to libraries
>> have potentially very important roles to play in
the transition
>> to open access.
>>
>> These roles range from increasing visibility of
open access
>> journals through providing abstracting and
indexing, to
>> supporting OA services such as the Directory of
Open Access
>> Journals, to contributing to the economics of open
access and
>> including the full text content of OA journals in
the aggregated
> > databases.
> >
> > This could be a win-win-win situation. OA
journals benefit from
> > enhanced impact and support; vendors can provide
expanded
> > services at little or no additional cost; and
libraries can enjoy
>> more fulltext content in the well-developed
searching services we
>> currently enjoy.
>>
>> By my calculations, libraries could fund an
immense amount of
>> open access journals, at costs of an average of $1
- $10 per
>> title.
>>
>> For details, please see my blogpost, Open Access:
Roles for the
>> Aggregators:
>> http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2008/03/op
en-access-roles-for-
>> aggregators.html
>>
> > Any opinion expressed in this e-mail is that of
the author alone,
>> and does not represent the opinion or policy of BC
Electronic
>> Library Network or Simon Fraser University
Library.
>>
>> Heather Morrison, MLIS
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