RE: Cost of Open Access Journals: Other Observations

["D Anderson" <dh-anderson@corhealth.com>]

Other contributors to this list have a much deeper knowledge of the
politics of academic budgets than I do, but I can't imagine that a
research-oriented department would willingly accept the burden of paying
for access by everyone else, including non-research-oriented educational
institutions, commercial enterprises, and the general public.

Economists would argue that the end users of the information, the ones who
ultimately benefit from that information, should provide compensation
commensurate with the benefits they receive.

Dean H. Anderson

-----Original Message-----
J.F.Rowland@lboro.ac.uk
Sent: Thursday, May 27, 2004 5:27 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: Cost of Open Access Journals: Other Observations

Quoting Michael Leach <leach@eps.harvard.edu>:

[snip]
> On a practical level, each library will have to determine the types of
> OA journals it can afford (I'm speaking here of the institutional
> memberships that PLoS, IOP, BioMedCentral & others offer).
[snip]

I know I am in danger of becoming a bore on this topic, but I feel I must
say it again....

Publication charges for OA journals need not and should not be seen as a
*library* expense.  The intention is that they be charged to (first
preference) the research grant that funds the research reported in the
paper or (second preference) the institution that employs the author ar at
which the author is a research student.  In my opinion the institution
should charge them internally to the department where the research is
carried out.  Some are charging them to the library, but I think they are
misguided in doing so.  Regarding them as a library expense, as Leach does
here, muddies the waters and hides the critical difference between opan
access and toll access.

Fytton Rowland, Loughborough University, UK