Re: SCOAP3

["Enrico M. Balli" <enrico@medialab.sissa.it>]

Sent on behalf of Prof. Hector Rubinstein, Chairman of the J-Journals
Executive Editorial Committee.

Ms. Ann Okerson
Dr. Gene Sprouse
Dr. Joseph Serene

This is a collective answer to your reactions to the SCOAP3 
proposal.

I am an active High Energy and Cosmology theoretical physicist 
and together with Loriano Bonora and Daniele Amati the creator of 
the Journal of High Energy Physics (JHEP, jhep.sissa.it) and 
later of other journals such as the Journal of Cosmology and 
Astroparticle Physics (JCAP, jcap.sissa.it), the Journal of 
Instrumentation (JINST, jinst.sissa.it) and the Journal of 
Statistical Mechanics (JSTAT, jstat.sissa.it)

I first address the concerns of Ms. Okerson.

> When we met recently with a leader of the SCOAP3 initiative, he 
> mentioned that one of the incentives for libraries to join is 
> that the combined SCOAP3 group of subscribers will be large 
> enough to negotiate with the publishers and to reduce the 
> overall subscription fees we pay by as much as 2/3. This seemed 
> hugely optimistic to me, as none of the publishers listed 
> below, whatever their $/article, is making anywhere approaching 
> 2/3 surplus. And, in fact, societies like the APS note that 
> they have "no fat to trim."

I think that the answers to all her questions are simple and some are
implicitly given in the e-mail from Dr. Sprouse.

Indeed, at the end, Open Access is a question that boils down to 
giving access to every researcher to peer reviewed scientific 
material, at reasonable cost. If you look at the Table in the 
email from Dr. Sprouse it is no accident that the two non-profit 
journals, Phys. Rev. D and JHEP, cost about the same and 20 times 
less than Nuclear Physics B! How can you say that costs can not 
be cut by 2/3?. No one is asking to lower the price of JHEP or 
Phys. Rev. D., but just to force the commercial companies to be 
reasonable. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier) tells me that 
Reeds-Elsevier made 1.06 billion dollars in profits last year.

> Anyhow, this led to the SCOAP staff's statement that it should 
> be possible for publishers to bring their costs down that much, 
> through additional savings in their publication costs, and the 
> SCOAP3 negotiations will push publishers to achieve these. In 
> turn, we suggested that if such low cost, high quality could be 
> achieved, it might be useful for SCOAP3/CERN to demonstrate 
> that by starting a journal that proves the concept.

The second point raised by Ms. Okerson is really surprising. Such 
a journal has existed for 10 years now. It is JHEP! It is one of 
the largest in size in High Energy Physics, has the highest 
impact factor of all physics journals, and the largest number of 
most cited papers. It costs about 15% of Nuclear Physics B. So 
why is Ms. Okerson making this uneducated statement?

Now to the points raised by Dr. Sprouse

> To raise $3.7M, the US part of the $14M of consortium funding, 
> SCOAP3 is negotiating with US institutions involved in HEP 
> research. We estimate that only about 1/3 of the US 
> subscription revenue for Physical Review D comes from these 
> institutions, so if only they are involved, each must be asked 
> to triple what it now pays for PRD

The idea of OA is to shift the cost of peer review (which is the 
present value of journals) to the authors. As the SCOAP3 model 
implies, American-affiliated scholars are the authors of a 
quarter of accepted articles in High Energy Physics and this 
should be their share. Your analysis of how these costs will be 
distributed is misleading. The amount paid by American libraries 
would be for ALL journals. To say that it is an increase on the 
cost of Phys. Rev. D. by a factor of 3 it is not correct. If the 
3.7 million $ which SCOAP3 identifies as the "fair" US share are 
raised, they will pay for all High Energy Physics journals. So 
libraries will indeed be paying much less than today, while Phys. 
Rev. D. will have the same income. Sure enough, OA must propagate 
to all branches of physics and hopefully science so that the 
system will be simple. The subscription model may not be bad but 
has been distorted by some publishers who ask prices far beyond 
cost, taking advantage of a monopolistic situation. It is our 
duty to return these sums for research and education as it was 
the case until the 1940's. If publishers are forced to charge 
what APS or SISSA Medialab charge for their excellent journals it 
will be something of great value. There are other problems with 
private publishers (I was unfortunately the main Editor of High 
Energy Physics for Elsevier for many years). In a nutshell, they 
are not interested in science but in dividends. I hope you will 
reconsider your position.

Prof. Hector Rubinstein
Stockholm and Uppsala University,
Chairman of the J-Journals Executive Editorial Committee