RE: Funding OA

[David Stern <david.e.stern@yale.edu>]

OA should exist in academe.  Almost everyone believes that high barriers
to freely distributed scholarly information are an unnecessary hindrance
-- created by commercial forces.  But this is a complex situation.

I raise two key questions:

"How could we provide alternative support for the newly developing
scholarly information networks?"

And:

"How do societies fund their operations if not from publishing revenue?"

For question one: Do we ask only the authors (or author institutions) to
support the infrastructure, or do we also ask for support from other
readers who benefit from the distributed information (e.g. corporations,
other academic institutions and societies with vested interests)?

For question two: Do we ask only the members to support society
infrastructures, or do we also ask for support from taxpayers who benefit
from the products of society endeavors?

For both questions: Can we create infrastructures that cost significantly
less than the present systems and are palatable to all current
players/payers?

In my opinion, shared support for both efforts is reasonable, and the
separation of these questions is impossible.  Add to this the
publish-or-perish pressures driving the ever-escalating publication
process, and you see a complex scenario requiring a complete redesign of
the support for academic activities.  Only when we see publishing from
within its larger context will we be able to address these as symptoms of
a larger problem.

Shared support for academic endeavors of all kinds from the general
population, based upon new and least costly methods, seems to be the most
logical answer.  Determining the best balance of commercial profit
allowable to maintain and develop this scholarly network is the hard part.

Will we trust commercial companies, well-intentioned but poorly designed
society business models, or government funded platforms to be our
long-term solutions?  Perhaps a blend?

This analysis starts with a list of essential services we need to support,
a reasonable understanding of the costs for such systems, and an
accountable service provider evaluated upon evidence-based factors.  We
seem to be well along toward the first step, in the embryonic stages of
the second, and inching up upon cost-per-use analysis for the final review
stage.

New scholarly networks will either be driven by well-thought-out
possibilities or by eventual market factors layered on top of existing
structures.  The former will create less expensive and more powerful
networks, the latter will provide only the level of development the most
vested players can afford.  Any bets which will be the better long-term
product?

David Stern
Director of Science Libraries and Information Services
Kline Science Library
New Haven, CT  06520-8111
email:  david.e.stern@yale.edu

At 09:23 AM 8/13/2005, David Goodman wrote:
> 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