Re: Open Access outside the U.S/U.K.

[Ann Okerson <ann.okerson@yale.edu>]

Heather, in your first message you asked about international journals as
if titles ouside of one's home country, but is the question really about
foreign language periodical titles and titles from third world nations,
which would be mostly in foreign languages (foreign to English speakers)?

Note that most of the developing nations countries are still not
positioned to do electronic publishing and distribution for many reasons
(technology, infrastructure, bandwidth, computers, skill sets present in
country), so their publication in open access means is, for now, still a
ways out.  Ann

On Mon, 6 Sep 2004 heatherm@eln.bc.ca wrote:

> hi Ann - I'd like to think SFU is typical, but in practice I think SFU is
> far more globally-minded than the average university.  My profs at the
> University of Alberta were pointing out, in the 70's, that the
> international journals (meaning non-North America, non-European),
> especially the foreign language journals, were the ones that were being
> cut.
> 
> Just to clarify:  I didn't mean to say that libraries in Europe or North
> America deliberately targeted journals from outside these areas.  It's
> just that the careful cost-cutting measures you've described would,
> unfortunately, tend to have this effect.  For example, if cost-cutting is
> based on usage, it is quite likely that foreign language journals will be
> cut, as fewer people read them. It is also likely that journals focused on
> non-local issues (for example, library association journals produced by
> library associations in other countries) would tend to be cut first, for
> the same reason.
> 
> For Canadian libraries, it is essential to be able to access both Canadian
> indexing and journals.  Perhaps this has protected these journals from
> being cancelled by Canadian libraries?  Given decreasing purchasing power
> and a need to protect one's own publications, does this not suggest that
> more international journals will be cancelled?
> 
> The only antidote to these tendencies that I can see, is for libraries to
> base their purchasing decisions on a policy basis.  For example, libraries
> in the 70's could have said, "We must ensure that our cost-cutting
> measures do not disadvantage publishers in the third world", and acted
> accordingly.  Is there any evidence that that happened?
> 
> cheers,
> 
> Heather