Re: Richard Poynder Blog Posting about Costs of Open Access

["B.G. Sloan" <bgsloan2@yahoo.com>]

As I'm not as well-versed in OA as a lot of others on this list,
I'm probably going to ask some dumb/naive questions here...so
bear with me.  :-)

Richard Poynder's blog entry is very interesting, but I'm
confused at a couple of levels:

Poynder says:

"...many believe that one of the primary reasons for embracing OA
is that it will resolve the journal price inflation problem that
has now plagued the research community for several decades. The
hope has been that OA will somehow squeeze out all unnecessary
costs, and resolve the so-called iaffordability problem'."

I thought THE primary reason for embracing was to ensure open
access to scholarly communication? As Peter Suber notes:
"Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge,
and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. OA removes
price barriers (subscriptions, licensing fees, pay-per-view fees)
and permission barriers (most copyright and licensing
restrictions). The PLoS shorthand definition 'free
availability and unrestricted use' succinctly captures both
elements."

So what if OA turns out to cost as much (or perhaps marginally
more) overall as the more "traditional" scholarly publishing,
with the main difference being who pays the freight. Won't we
still have gained something (i.e., broader access to scholarly
output)? In a way I'm reminded of my early days working in
automated library resource sharing systems. People always
expected the use of collaborative systems to reduce local costs.
My argument was that even if the costs stayed the same for the
individual library, they were still gaining something. Rather
than having access to the 100,000 or so titles in the local
academic library, they had ready access to the millions of titles
held by the group as a whole.

The final question I have concerns what Poynder refers to as "the
journal price inflation problem." I've worked in libraries since
1972 and I seem to recall that this "problem" has always been
with us. (I can't call it a "crisis" because I agree with what
Phil Davis says about using that word). The "problem" has been a
topic for (often heated) discussion for quite some time. I know
some gains have been made, but I'm just wondering why it is still
unresolved to a great extent, even though it impacts scholarly
communication, which is essential to the academic enterprise.
Just curious?

Once again, sorry if my questions are naive...

Thanks!

Bernie Sloan


--- On Fri, 6/13/08, Okerson, Ann <ann.okerson@yale.edu> wrote:

> From: Okerson, Ann <ann.okerson@yale.edu>
> Subject: Correction: Richard Poynder Blog Posting about Costs of Open Access
> To: "liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu" <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
> Date: Friday, June 13, 2008, 2:55 PM
> My apologies to Richard Poynder and all liblicense-l
> readers.
> My head was reading Richard's posting and my fingers
> were busy
> swiping/pasting another open URL.  The correct URL for
> Richard's
> posting is:
>
> http://poynder.blogspot.com/2008/06/open-access-doing-numbers.html#links
>
> Ann Okerson/Yale Library
>
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