RE: Funding OA

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

The key factor in causing a delay in OA is not funding. 

The key factor seems to be getting authors to insist upon it.  The surface
reason they do not, is that they do not find the process trivially easy.
(Those who think it is easy may be right, but the authors don't.)

The more fundamental reason is that many authors do not consider it
important to have an audience outside their own research community, and
thus consider readership and even citations from outside their associates
to be irrelevant.  (Most people outside their own field may think them
wrong, but they disregard such outsiders.)

The non-financial benefits of OA, however important, may not be sufficient
to induce funders to require and pay for true 100% non-embargoed mandatory
OA to the published items. (They should be thought sufficient, but that
does not seem to be the case.) When advocates of OA disagree about how to
fund it, or how much funding will be necessary, they are concerned about
the secondary factors of managing the transition and ensuring
sustainability. They all believe that a way to fund the necessary features
will be found-- there are many possible models.

However, in some cases cost might promote adoption.  It should be possible
to construct a system that will provide major cost savings--not 25%, which
is merely three years price inflation.  If so, funding agencies might
choose to require it, rather than pay (directly or indirectly) the current
level of publishing or subscription fees.

Such a system might not involve organizations like the traditional
publishers or the traditional libraries. That is not a factor in
considring whether it might be more helpful to the potential users and the
authors as well.
 
Dr. David Goodman
Associate Professor
Palmer School of Library and Information Science
Long Island University

---Original Message-----
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Richard Feinman
Sent: 09 August 2005 01:29
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Funding OA

Everybody seems to agree that the key component of progress on OA is
funding. I have largely been an observer on the this issue, so forgive any
repetition.  It seems to me that a first step is to describe the flow of
money at the current time and ask how it might be re-routed or modified to
provide better access. ...

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Richard D. Feinman
Department of Biochemistry
SUNY Downstate Medical Center
Brooklyn, NY 11203