RE: A Prophylactic Against the Edentation of the RCUK Policy Proposal

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

Perhaps it would be well to also avoid such terminology as "most
unlikely"or "will not soon lead..."  and better not to say, as the
previous posting does, that "Publishers will adapt and survive." The most
that can be said is that one hopes or guesses that the publishers will be
able to adapt and survive.

The hypothesis--stated either way--can and will be tested; it will be
tested as all predictions are, by the events. In the meantime, surely it
is appropriate for all of us in our different sectors to consider the
possibilities.  No one can do this exactly or confidently, but that does
not mean that one cannot do it at all.

It is impossible to conduct an enterprise or organized activity by being
passive. A library most decide whether or not to sign a multi-year
contract. A publisher must decide whether or not to covert a few journals
to OA, and whether or not to impose an embargo for "green" OA. An
institution must decide whether or not to support an IR.  An author must
decide where and how to publish.  To hope for the best is not responsible
planning, and the institutional inertia Crow refers to

In that time we should study the possibilities and the factors involved,
rather than pontificate about them or ignore them, or keep our thinking
under wraps. One can guess intelligently at academic inertia by studying
previous decisions: for example the number of years universities consider
big deals before they enter them.  A publisher can reveal cancellation
rates as a function of embargo length, not consider it as a competitive
secret.  Use figures for journals and for universities can be openly
collected and published.

A publisher--any publisher--has more to gain from knowing this data, than
it has to lose by concealing its own. The standard contracts should be
rewritten to put the statistics -- sufficiently aggregated for privacy --
in the public domain, rather than the property of the publishers or the
universities.

Under Stalin, the USSR  did not release population figures.

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 David Prosser
Sent: Mon 7/11/2005 5:32 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: RE: A Prophylactic Against the Edentation of the RCUK Policy
Proposal

We appear to be agreed on the issue that started this exchange.  The
original statement from Stevan that Joe took exception to - 'The argument
that self-archiving will lead to journal cancellations and collapse, in
contrast, is not based on objective fact but on *hypothesis*.' - is
correct.  There is no evidence.

For the rest, I think that the last two paragraphs of the quote from Raym
Crow says it very well:

"In any event, the systemic inertia inherent in the traditional scholarly
publishing paradigm suggests that one need not fear the precipitous
collapse of commercial academic publishers. The best of them will adapt
and survive under new models and will continue to perform a valuable
albeit changed role in scholarly communications."

Publishers respond to changes in technology and changes in the market.
In the last ten years we have seen a massive change in the technology -
the internet - and we are currently seeing a massive change in the market
- the funding bodies deciding that they wish to have wider dissemination
of the research they fund.  Publishers will adapt and survive - no doubt
aided by far-sighted consultants!

David Prosser