RE: Publishers' view/reply to David Prosser

["T Scott Plutchak" <tscott@uab.edu>]

The calculations that Anthony refers to can be found in Elsevier's
testimony to the select committee.  Using ISI data they calculate the UK
produces 60,000 articles annually out of the global production of 1.2
million, hence 5%.  UK spending on journals is 82 million pounds; they
calculate global costs at $3,750 per article, which results in payment of
3% of the total.

The point here (not that I'm necessarily defending the calculation) is not
that the UK produces a majority of scholarship in any area, but that it
produces more than it consumes, and if the costs for production are tied
to the article, overall spending from the UK in an OA model would increase
from the current amount spent on subscriptions.

Following on this line, it seems pretty clear to me that a
research-intensive institution like my own would end up being responsible
for a greater portion of the production costs under OA than we are
currently spending on subscriptions.  For example, my institution
routinely produces nearly 1400 articles per year indexed in MEDLINE. Even
at the $1500 figure of PLoS, that's over $2 million, and I spend only $1.5
million on serials currently.  You can modify the calculations yourselves
if the $3500 figure (which is widely reported as the estimate from John
Cox Associates) or the $3750 figure (which Elsevier quotes as coming from
the Open Society Institute) is nearer the mark.

I do NOT however, think this is an argument AGAINST Open Access.  I am
very much a supporter of the principles of Open Access, but I think we
have to realize that in a world in which Open Access becomes the dominant
model, the economic disruptions are going to be very severe. Open Access
advocates need to recognize this and start coming up with strategies to
deal with it.

T. Scott Plutchak

Editor, Journal of the Medical Library Association

Director, Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences
University of Alabama at Birmingham
tscott@uab.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: Hamaker, Chuck [mailto:cahamake@email.uncc.edu] 
Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 2004 10:28 PM
To: 'Anthony Watkinson '; 'liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu '
Subject: RE: Publishers' view/reply to David Prosser

Anthony:  Can you tell us what the calculation you mention below comes
from? citation etc?

I don't know an area the UK produces a majority of STM scholarship in,
though there may well be several, It is the minority of scholarship in
most STM areas, and it seems to me that Open Access would mean MORE
access for UK users, i.e. UK libraries by many accounts have relatively
small title lists. I don't know what that means in terms of adequacy,
and I don't know if that has been assessed.

I seem to remember an article in the 1980's that suggested as access to
chemistry journals went down in some UK institutions, output from
researchers went up-oh well..research in this area as you know is an
interesting mix of helpful and not...

What would it cost to improve access to existing literatures in the UK?

Do UK institutions routinely provide access to most of what researchers
need? Has anyone asked the researchers if they get sufficient access to
the world's literatures today? In other words, the question I asked
almost ten years ago -what do you need to do your job ?-is the bottom
line,-- not current library acquisitions or access-- for supporting
research. If a report calls the UK a "net exporter" of STM perhaps that
is because the needs or researchers have not been assessed rather than
because the UK buys access to less STM literatures than it exports?

Chuck Hamaker