RE: Journals, society activities and the zero-sum game

[Jan Velterop <velterop@biomedcentral.com>]

>Rick Anderson wrote:
> But let's not pretend that mandatory OA won't hurt societies.

Let's not pretend that it necessarily hurts societies, either. The core of
Open Access is that the scientific literature is made optimally useful to
science and society as a whole, employing whichever technology is
available to us. Societies, as indeed any other publishers, could see
mandatory OA as a stimulus, rather than as a threat. Comparison has been
made to compulsory fitting of catalytic converters on car exhausts, seen
by some car manufacturers as a huge threat when first announced. We can
agree that that particular threat has not materialised, I assume.

In spite of what some publishers have said (in 'evidence' given to the UK
Parliamentary Committee), the overwhelming majority of primary research
journals turnover -- primary material being the stuff affected by Open
Access mandates -- is realised from sales to scientific institutions, and
not to industry (not necessarily true for secondary publications or
databases). Interestingly enough, this same constituency would pay for
Open Access. Of course, the distribution of financial contributions
between institutions may differ from the current one. That will only serve
to correct the current situation in which the poorer institutions are
footing a proportionally higher fraction of the bill than the richer ones.

The point is that it is just as possible to make a reasonable income with
Open Access as with subscriptions. I'm not saying there are no hurdles.
They are more of a cultural kind than of a fundamental economical one. The
difference between the old and new models is that the old paradigm assumes
that *access to scientific information* is something that needs to be paid
for (so indirectly paying for the service of publishing), and the new
paradigm assumes that it is the *service of publishing* that needs to be
paid for directly. Even if the same total amount of money is involved, the
clear benefit of the new paradigm is that it makes universal Open Access
possible; a great scientific and societal good. Not to mention the
benefits of costs being proportional with the research efforts, the much
greater transparency, and the introduction of real competition, which
fuels efficiency and innovation.

Any society who wants to explore the possibilities of profitable (sorry,
surplus-able) Open Access publishing in detail is invited to contact me.

Jan Velterop
BioMed Central
www.biomedcentral.com