Re: Lancet on open access

["Anthony Watkinson" <anthony.watkinson@btopenworld.com>]

I have not had the advantage of reading the article by Brian Crawford yet
so this is not a defence of whatever it is he has written.

As I have often said in postings there is a relationship between more
papers and higher prices. It is not the only reason for higher prices but
there is in the calculations of all publishers an element of increased
costs = increased prices. Because there is a lot more research funding
during the last thirty years there are going to be more papers, more costs
and higher prices for journals or new journals. There is no reason why
rejection rates should not be kept up. My experience is that most
publishers have tried to keep standards up because you do not get the best
authors if you do not publish the good papers. Good authors do not want to
publish in journals which have low standards. Publishers want to get the
good authors writing their best papers or at least good papers.

Page charges hardly exist outside the US. I have just been at a meeting a
learned society publisher of impeccable standards told me that her editors
think of page charges as immoral. I am quoting here. I do not think they
are immoral. There is a resistance among authors to paying up front. This
is not an argument against open access but to ignore this resistance is to
minimise the problems of switching to an OA model.

Anthony

----- Original Message -----
From: "Hamaker, Chuck" <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2003 10:59 PM
Subject: Lancet on open access

> The Lancet article by Wiley excec Brian Crawford raises one of the
> stranger arguments I've seen in contra open access, i.e. if the author
> pays, why there's more incentive to publish the paper. And maybe quality
> will drop too.
>
> Surely Mr. Crawford knows that "more papers published means higher
> subscription prices" has been a publisher mantra more than any other
> single argument -over the last 30 years by publishers, followed of course
> by its inflation stupid. Turns out now inflation is low, why it isn't
> inflation stupid. Oh, it must be the number of papers then. Wait, that's
> why we can't have open access. Does your head begin to spin?
>
> MOST commercial publishers- until quite recently raised their captive
> library journal subscription rates annually, citing "increased pages" or
> increased articles as the justification. The modus operandi of commerical
> publishers is a reason against open access, ie. the possibility more will
> be published resulting in lower quality?? I wonder if Mr. Crawford
> recognizes the irony of a Wiley excec making that argument. Has he looked
> at how rapidly Wiley has been increasing its journals costs lately and
> why?? (because they can is the answer)

[SNIP]