Re: Who gets hurt by Open Access?

[Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>]

No, not at all.  My advice to small publishers is (a) seek consolidation,
whether by selling out to a larger company or by developing publishing
consortia (b) be very careful about working with aggregators, whose
success often undermines subscriptions (c) steer clear of Open Access,
including declining to publish authors who self-archive (d) if the journal
is owned by a professional society, regularly inform the membership how
much higher their dues will be if publishing revenues drop (e) petition
elected representatives to get the NIH and other governmental bodies to
get out of publishing (f)  seek new revenue streams by repackaging
material (new sales channels, licensed archives, etc.) (g) most
importantly, make every effort to publish the finest work in the
field--there is no substitute for editorial excellence (h) begin to
experiment with INEXPENSIVE author-pays hosting schemes, something between
arXiv and BMC, which strip away most of the costs associated with
editorial review (e.g., prepublication peer review) (i) aggressively
pursue search-engine marketing, bypassing library portals (j) actively
market the journal's role in certification to its readership (k) be wary
of marketing plans whose success is largely built upon price increases.  
This list can go on and on.  

There is a great deal that a publisher, big or small, could do.  What they
should NOT do is put valuable time into OA.  Publishers should defend
THEIR interests, just as librarians and authors do theirs, as one would
expect.

Joe Esposito

On 7/19/05, David Prosser <david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> 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