RE: Who gets hurt by Open Access?

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

Let Joe raise the hard questions;
the rest of us will answer them.

The best solution for the smaller society publishers was the original
solution due to Varmus: that the essential roles of the scientific
societies should be subsidized directly, instead of forcing them to rely
on making a profit by publishing, which, quite apart from OA, is not that
reliable for most societies.  There is no reason to think that the limited
resources of a small society make it an efficient publisher.

The other possibility-- in some fields --is to convert to OA journals.
This should be particular appealing to those journals that already have
page charges, because they merely need to be increased. This will
naturally only be feasible for first rate journals in subject fields where
there are large grants.

The only solution for good journals in fields where researchers do not
have large grants is a subsidy for publication. This is what happens even
now, but indirectly.  If a journal or society is worth subsidizing, it is
better to subsidize it explicitly than to rely on grants to produce
indirect costs, to give some of that to the library, which will give some
of it for the journal, with the understanding that perhaps some of the
journal's profit will be used for the important but non-publishing
functions of the society.

The reason this had persisted is because the sums involved have been
relatively small, as compared to the really expensive subject fields.  
Thus the money can make its way down the chain without any clarity about
who is ultimately paying for what. This inherently produces uneconomic
solutions and inefficient use of what money there is for the smaller
fields. Inefficient as it is, this persists because the money can indeed
be hidden in the overall structure.  But once the structure becomes
unstable, the items hidden in the cracks become revealed.

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: Tue 7/19/2005 7:34 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: RE: Who gets hurt by Open Access?
 
JE:  It is precisely the smaller publishers who have the most to lose
with OA.

DP:  So, your advice to small publishers is to hang on in there, put up
with the decline in their subscription base as libraries have less and
less 'free money' to play with (left over from increased spending on big
deals) and wait for - well wait for what?  What's the business model that
is going to allow them their best chance of survival in an environment
that is dominated by a handful of very large players?

David Prosser