Re: Cost of Open Access Journals: Other Observations

["Gherman, Paul M" <paul.gherman@vanderbilt.edu>]

Ann,

It seems to me that if librarians want to help, we should work with our
faculty authors and support their authors fees directly, instead of
working with publishers. It will give us a new way to connect with our
faculty in a meaningful fashion, still test the model, and redirect our
funds to OA journals in a supportive way.

The other contribution we can make is to take on the burden of long-term
preservation via our Institutional Repositories, and not leave this
unknown future cost to the publishers.

Paul

Gherman, Paul M
University Librarian
Vanderbilt University
611 General Library Building
419 21 st. Ave South
Nashville, TN 37215
615-322-7120 voice
615-343-8279 fax
Email: paul.gherman@Vanderbilt.Edu

____

--On Thursday, May 27, 2004 10:09 PM -0400 Ann Okerson 
<ann.okerson@yale.edu> wrote:

> Fytton:  Your message makes sense; I too believe(d)  that the OA
> journals charging publication fees were established, (at least
> partly) in order to test the viability of author-pays, rather
> than reader-pays, for a variety of interesting reasons.  But last
> weekend, when participating on an OA panel at a society
> conference and making a similar point to yours, I heard from one
> of the highly visible OA publishers that the reason they created
> library membership fees was that a number of libraries had
> approached *them* (the publishers) and said they wanted to help
> -- and asked how they could support these journals/publishers
> financially, could they pay something?  From this response, which
> has also been mentioned in other fora, it would appear that we in
> the library community somehow don't want to test this option in
> any rigorous way -- or at least we are not advancing that
> experiment.
>
> (Note herein I'm not saying that librarians should or shouldn't
> have made these offers, but now reporting a discussion at a
> recent meeting of STM journal editors.)  Ann Okerson/Yale Library