RE: NIH Public Access Policy: is the funding for full OA already there?

["Ian Russell" <ian.russell@cytherean.co.uk>]

Heather which part of which ALPSP study are you quoting here?

Look at it another way: if, as seems likely, widespread 
self-archiving drives subscription journals out of business then 
the quality assurance, production editing, reference linking etc, 
etc for all 65,000 NIH articles will have to be paid for somehow 
and most of that would have to come from author-side payments 
(the concept that a large proportion could come from, for 
example, advertising is frankly laughable).

That leaves an NIH pot of less than $500 per paper. 
Pay-to-publish charges in quality bio-medical science journals 
are mostly at the $2500 - $3000 range (PLoS Biology is currently 
$2750 remember and they are not even covering their costs from 
this).  That's a short fall of at least $2000 per paper or $130 
million dollars per year for all of them.

That's $130 million dollars that could have been spent on 
research; or that will need to come out of the taxpayers pocket; 
or that will need to disappear from library budgets and be moved 
to the NIH - anyone know how that might happen by the way?

> An NIH-funded article that is openly accessible avoids costs 
> for future NIH researchers building on what has already been 
> learned, for example.

What costs are avoided and how?  I've no idea of the mechanism 
that you are suggesting for this - can you point us at a study 
demonstrating how this increase in productivity comes about and 
quantifying the savings?  It's time the OA lobby moved on from 
'motherhood and apple pie' statements and demonstrated the clear 
benefits of open access.

Ian Russell
ALPSP

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu [mailto:owner-liblicense-
> l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Heather Morrison
> Sent: 14 August 2007 21:58
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Subject: NIH Public Access Policy: is the funding for full OA already
> there?
>
> The funding for full open access publishing to NIH-funded
> research may already be there, within existing NIH grant
> provisions.
>
> NIH is already spending $30 million per year in publication
> expenses, such as page charges, and allows for "indirect costs"
> which can be used for such items as library subscriptions and
> site licenses.
>
> Let's look at what can be done just with the $30 million per year
> already spent on publication charges.  About 60-65,000 articles
> were published based on NIH research in 2003.  If all of these
> were published as open access, less than half would incur article
> processing fees (as indicated by an ALPSP study).  If the $30
> million per year were used to fund article processing fees for
> half of NIH- related articles, 32,500, the average available per
> article would be $923.  That is less than what is charged by some
> open access publishers, it is true; but it is also more than what
> is charged by others.

[SNIP]

> Heather Morrison, MLIS
> The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
> http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com