RE: Looking an open access gift horse in the mouth

["Rick Anderson" <rickand@unr.edu>]

> The point is that the two, institutional membership fees and subscritption
> fees, are in fact utterly different things.  There is no reason why
> institutional membership should be paid for by the library budget at all.
> Most who favour the OA model make the reasonable assumption that a fair
> proportion, at least, of the author payments might be taken from outside
> research funding and thus not come from the University's main funds;

But when it comes to the impact of the OA model on library budgets, the
question isn't what's reasonable -- the question is what's likely.  I find
it highly unlikely that these fees will, in reality, end up coming from
anywhere other than library budgets.  Academic units have never responded
well to suggestions from the library that they (the academic units) pay
for journals themselves.  Is there something magical about the OA model
that will change their minds?

-------------
Rick Anderson
Director of Resource Acquisition
University of Nevada, Reno Libraries
(775) 784-6500 x273
rickand@unr.edu