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

["Fytton Rowland" <J.F.Rowland@lboro.ac.uk>]

Rick Anderson said:

"The underlying issue is real, though: where OA is mandatory but author
charges are not dictated from above, there will be a powerful incentive
for publishers to compete for authors by lowering charges."

Lowering prices isn't the only form of competition.  Ever heard of market
segmentation?  PLoS obviously thinks that they can gesucceed with with a
high author charge, for quality.  Other publishers may decide to go for a
lower-price segment of the market.  May they all be successful!.

What we don't want - in my view - is a single fixed price for all titles
(not that we could have that, even if we wanted to).  That would not
fulfil the function of a goodscholarly publishing system, because it would
not encourage diversity of provision.

Leaving aside the "green road to OA" for the moment (but not forgetting
its existence, Professor Harnad!) - a vigorous system of OA journals would
include a variety of different kinds of publisher with different kinds of
journals.  The difference from the old toll-access system would be that
the market would actually work, this time, because they who pay the piper
(authors and their research funders) would be calling the tune.

Fytton Rowland, Loughborough University, UK.