RE: How to fund open access journals from available sources

["David Goodman" <David.Goodman@liu.edu>]

Let me start by recalling that I consider open access journals a minimal
solution, because it does not drastically reduce the costs of the system
as much as some alternatives do. I suggest it only because the
alternatives will cause yet more disruption. I personally find disruption
challenging, but the users may not agree.

If Open Access models succeed, it will be due to the actions of the
authors much than the libraries. It appears from actual experience that in
the fields where the authors have grant funding available to meet
publication costs, they are willing to use it, or a least a reasonable
amount of it. This has been proven not just from the experience of PLoS,
but from the experience of those non-profit journals that already have
substantial publication charges.

Authors appear to be willing in principal, but in many subjects they do
not have the financial resources of those in physics or medical sciences.
If they adopt it, they will surely ask that the additional resources come
from the libraries--indeed, they are already asking, as in the PLoS and
BMC subscription plans.  Phil's argument that he would not pay publication
charges is sufficiently disproven by the success of PNAS and Physical
Review. Even for himself, I suspect his organization would find the money
to pay the publication charges if he were to have one of his excellent
articles on journal use accepted by PNAS.

Libraries will probably be faced with funding Open Access journals whether
or not they are willing. Thus, I do not see my proposal as a matter of
altruism by libraries--I see it as a matter of survival. Currently almost
the entire monetary costs of the system are paid through libraries. In a
system where the libraries have the opportunity to pay part of the costs,
if they are not paid voluntarily by libraries, they will be paid
involuntarily in part or in full: either the money for publication charges
will be taken in some manner from library funds, or the existing system
will continue, at the libraries continued expense and at a figure that is
clearly beyond what they can continue to pay.

Irving and Phil have not noticed sufficiently that my communication
explicitly dealt with a single journal. This was not just for simplicity.
I agree with them that it would be much more difficult to change the
entire system in this manner at one go; it is necessary to build up trust,
and this will be built up by the initial conversion of individual journals
one journal at a time. None of this discussion would have even begun had
BMC not been willing to pioneer, and PLoS not shown the applicability to
first-rate content. Part of my initial skepticism of BMC was the great
number of titles they initially introduced; PLoS, wisely, has waited for
several very successful issue of its first title before just now
announcing its second.
 
Phil's argument that individual libraries would defect would be more
applicable if there were only a trivial cost savings. As there will be
some, and as the increasing number of journals that convert increase the
possible savings, I think the opposite would occur, and that there would
be a community-wide snowball effect. I must comment that neither Phil nor
I have any basis except speculation and analogy for the effect on
libraries. He is using the possiblity of failure as a reason not to
experiment; I certainly do not want to do the necessary experimentation in
such a way as to risk disaster; this is another reason for my initial
limitation to single publications.

I agree with Irving's comments about the need for the involvement of
publishers. Their willingness to reduce costs (and profits) is one of the
key factors, as is their willingness to experiment. I regret that they
have so far shown very little of either. I predict they will do so
increasingly for the same reason as libraries: survival.

I also agree with his comments about the need to propose solutions for
different types of publication. But I cannot do so in a single posting. I
will confine myself to the primary scientific journal however--solving all
their problems is enough for one person.

Dr. David Goodman
Associate Professor
Palmer School of Library and Information Science
Long Island University
dgoodman@liu.edu

(and, formerly: Princeton University Library)