Re: Money for OA; was, RE: fascinating question

[heatherm@eln.bc.ca]

My intepretation of David's message is that he is talking about diverting
funds from the current library subscription model to pay for an OA system,
not a need to constantly increase revenue for OA.  In this sense, I agree
with David, and would love to hear ideas for how to go about doing this.

One area where I agree with Sally is that the total costs of publishing
scholarly journal articles is related to total journal article production.  
To me, the most critical factor to think about here is what I see as some
early signs that some of the developing nations are indeed developing.
This could lead to significant increases in research production,
particularly from areas such as China and India.  The advantage of OA is
that it is tied with production; our costs only increase when we can
afford to do more research.  In a subscription-based model, if others can
afford to do more research, our costs increase (perhaps a great deal more
than 3%), or we do not have access.  With an OA model, if others can
afford to do more research, everyone automatically benefits.

Whether either the current subscription system or an OA system would need
to function on a basis of constantly increasing revenue, in my opinion, is
not proven.  There are efficiencies in computing power and automation.  
There is no reason why in the long run the costs of journal production,
whether subscription or OA, should not decrease, along with prices
(whether subscription or production based).

cheers,

Heather Morrison


On Thu, 30 Dec 2004 22:13:54 EST liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu wrote:
> David is right - the total amount of money required under an OA model
> would, indeed, continue to increase with the steady growth in the number
> of papers (assuming OA made no difference to the flow of papers, then we
> might expect the increase to continue at around 3% per annum overall).
> 
> Sally Morris, Chief Executive
> Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers
> E-mail:  chief-exec@alpsp.org