RE: Journal publishing and author self-archiving: Peaceful Co-Existence and Fruitful Collaboration

["Rick Anderson" <rickand@unr.edu>]

> Let me add, though, that I personally do believe that global 
> self-archiving will eventually lead to cancellation pressure, 
> but no one knows how much or when, as it will depend on how 
> quickly global self-archiving and self-archiving mandates will 
> grow.

Of course we know how and when.  How: cancellation pressure will 
come by the appearance of journal content in an 
easily-accessible, free public forum.  When: when no one needs to 
subscribe to a journal in order to access its content easily, 
people will start cancelling their subscriptions.  We don't need 
a double-blind study to arrive at this conclusion; we only need 
to understand the most basic economics.

A more important point:

> Self-archiving brings substantial demonstrated benefits to 
> research, researchers, their institutions, their funders, and 
> the tax-paying public that funds the funders and institutions. 
> Hence OA is optimal and inevitable for research.

Stevan's use of "hence" is not earned by the preceding argument. 
Just because something brings benefits does not mean that it is 
either optimal or inevitable.  In order to know whether 
self-archiving mandates are an optimal solution, we need to know 
not just the benefits they provide, but also the costs they will 
incur.  It's a matter of _net_ benefit.  Self-archiving mandates 
are not free.

----
Rick Anderson
Dir. of Resource Acquisition
University of Nevada, Reno Libraries
rickand@unr.edu