RE: OA Funding

["David Goodman" <David.Goodman@liu.edu>]

Regular readers will excuse me for repeating the basics:

It is not libraries that would support OA, but the money which goes to
libraries to purchase journals could with equal reason go to academic
departments to pay the publishing charge. It's the same money, and the
same journals. Despite what libraries may like to think, with the possible
exception of dedicated endowment funds, its's the university's money from
a variety of sources, and the library is merely the purchasing agent.  
If, for example a university were to allot to the library $1 million to
buy Elsevier journals, if Elsevier journals were available without cost to
the user, the $1 million could very appropriately be used to pay Elsevier
its publication fees. The only reason the library has the money is for the
very short time between the allotment and the payment--no matter who
handles the purchase orders, the money is coming from the university and
going to Elsevier. An appropriate library role is to try to get some other
part of the university to provide a reasonable share of the money, so it
has some money left to resume buying books. One cannot stop paying the $3
or $4 million a science journal collection costs and expect the rest of
the university not to ask what you are doing with the money. If within a
university the debate becomes between the library on one side and the
academic departments on the other, we all know who will lose.

It is perfectly true that the 5/5 rules is not an absolute limit. It is a
safe harbor, meaning that a library is guaranteed the ability to make
copies without paying copyright for that many articles. If you order more,
there are two options: either justify the acquisition under the general
fair use provisions (which are deliberately not specified exactly) or to
pay the publisher the copyright fee, either through the CCC or a document
delivery service which collects the money from you and pays the CCC. There
are librarians who regard the rule as an absolute limit and refuse to
place orders over the limit and and pay the fee. They account for some of
the contempt that some faculty and students feel towards our profession.

The safe harbor provisions were not a free offer from the library
profession; they were the product of long and bitter negotiation between
the publishers and librarians, negotiations which managed to establish
some agreed common-sense compromises while not agreeing on much else.  
Copyright circular 21, "Copyright for teachers and librarians"
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ21.pdf is the best place to start. The
extent of disagreement is well described.

It is very similar to the debate about OA.  If journals are to be
published, publishers must be paid, and the details of the amount paid and
who shall pay it presumably will end in some sort of agreement. Each group
will probably consider the other has won--the traditional test of a fair
compromise. What we need to avoid is being satisfied with a very weak
compromise, and I too fear the current NIH negotiations will lead to one.  
If the NIH finds politics permit it to do very little, the authors can
still do much; what the library needs to do is explain the issue to them
and encourage them.  OA does not need the NIH, it just needs the authors.

Dr. David Goodman
Associate Professor
Palmer School of Library and Information Science
Long Island University
dgoodman@liu.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu on behalf of Janellyn P Kleiner
Sent: Thu 1/13/2005 10:04 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: OA Funding
 
Am I missing something here? Why assume that libraries should fund OA?  
It appears to me that OA support for faculty publications falls within 
the purview of academic departments where such work is essential for 
promotion and tenure.  In academic libraries where faculty status is 
attainable, then libraries should pay OA charges for their tenure track 
faculty but not for other departments' faculty. To begin estimating OA 
costs for libraries makes it appear that libraries might be willing to 
underwrite those costs campuswide. I think that is a mistake. OA is an 
institutional matter, not a library matter. We have something of a 
history of entwinning ourselves in issues  to our own detriment.

Example: Fair Use Law and the guidelines on numbers of copies that can 
be made -- there was nothing in the law restricting the number of 
copies that could be made for research and instruction purposes. The 
restricted number and other such guidelines were proposed by librarians 
because we have this apparent need to quantify.  And, there is nothing 
wrong with quantifying when appropriate.  Now, because of those 
guidelines, we have various records to maintain, primarily in 
interlibrary loan, to demonstrate that we are in compliance with 
copyright law. Many librarians today think those numbers are copyright 
law when, in fact, they are not. Unfortunately, those guidelines 
created by library associations have taken on the power of law.  They 
were a mistake and resulted in our profession setting unnecessary 
restrictions that have enabled publishers to create a new revenue stream
from copyright fees to increase their profits.

I think our efforts would benefit our libraries and institutions more 
if we directed our energies to advocating Open Access activities. The 
NIH proposal is now "on hold" and appears to have been weakened 
considerably because commercial science publishers directed their 
efforts against it.  Meanwhile, we dither about OA costs and risk being 
sidelined in the real Open Access movement.  Are we going to let 
publishers find another new revenue source by suggesting libraries pay 
faculty publishing fees?

We need to be advocates of OA and support agencies that propose sound OA
initiatives.  We need to oppose commercial science publishers and win 
the right for free public access to publicly supported research results 
as they become available, not in another year or even longer. We have 
already provided the tax support and institutional support for such 
research.  It is ours and we need to make it ours possibly by providing 
institutional repository capabilities and even that role might be 
shared with our university computing centers. Let's not make another 
mistake that has the potential to cost us more in the future.

Jane Kleiner
Associate Dean of Libraries for Collection Services
The LSU Libraries
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, LA 70803
Phone: 225-578-2217
Fax: 225-578-6825
E-Mail: jkleiner@lsu.edu