RE: universities experiment with paying OA fees

["David Prosser" <david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk>]

Sandy

As you know, in the subscription business model users of journals 
(both authors and readers) are insulated from the cost of the 
journals they use. This has led to the disconnect between price 
and quality or service.

A shift to publication charges makes it possible that the users 
(while acting as authors) will see the costs and be able to make 
decisions on whether they are getting value for money.  This 
could have an effect on prices as users will have an incentive 
'shop around' based on the level of service they want from the 
journal.  I hedge with 'possible' and 'could' because it is clear 
that if there is no transparency in the way the funds are set-up 
we could have the situation you describe.  If the university pays 
the publisher without the author knowing the costs involved then 
we have the potential for a continuation of the current 
dysfunctional market (albeit with wider access).

One of the alleged disadvantages of such funds is that they will 
led to discussions on campus about what can be published, where, 
and at what cost. If we want the market to function then this is 
actually a good thing!

Best wishes

David


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Sandy Thatcher
Sent: 29 May 2008 02:20
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: universities experiment with paying OA fees

The May edition of SPARC enews features this story about
UC-Berkeley's initiative to help faculty pay open access fees:
http://www.arl.org/sparc/publications/articles/memberprofile-berkeley.shtml.
The story also reports on earlier efforts along these lines by the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of
Wisconsin at Madison.

My question about these initiatives is: does anybody really expect
this kind of promotion of open access to change the landscape of STM
publishing, now dominated by commercial publishers? As I understand
them, these programs do not limit the payment of fees to fully open
access journals or to journals operated by non-profit organizations.
So, in theory, commercial STM publishers could simply substitute such
fees for subscription monies they now earn, without in any way
affecting their profit margins. Indeed, unless they were to decrease
their subscription prices in some direct proportion to the fees
received to pay for selective OA (as, for example, Oxford University
Press is doing), their overall profits would even increase more.

How does this change the overall economics of STM journal publishing?
It does, of course, make more content more widely accessible to users
wherever an Internet connection is available, but it seems to me that
it doesn't change one whit the burden on universities for sustaining
the system of STM publishing. It merely substitutes OA fees for
subscriptions. Is this any more sustainable long term than the
current model?  The sums provided by these programs are also
pitifully small in comparison with the real costs of publishing
articles (about which there has been a lively debate on another
thread on this listserv) and the number of faculty who have
publishing needs at UC and these other campuses.