Re: universities experiment with paying OA fees

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

Joe

Maybe I'm not listening, but it's interesting that your big ideas 
- the importance of collaboration between smaller publishers and 
concentration on value-adding - are exactly what I've been 
advocating in this discussion.

Where we appear to differ is in the belief that the subscription 
environment is one in which the smaller publishers can successful 
thrive in the long term.  I think it's not, and to date the move 
of smaller publishers away from that environment (either through 
surrendering independence by moving to a large publisher or by 
shifting to open access) tends to support my view.  Clubbing 
togther will buy time, but as long as libraries continue to spend 
increasing proportions of their budgets on big deals from smaller 
numbers of large publishers that time is limited.

David



In message <200806192227.m5JMRYhH027267@quickgr.its.yale.edu> liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu writes:
> David's comment that we hear little about the viable alternatives
> to open access for small publishers suggests to me that someone
> isn't listening.  While there are undoubtedly many who are
> arguing that OA has no real possibilities, there are many people
> working responsibly in this area, and they have found that the
> number of options for small publishers is large.  OA is just one
> of many things that a small publisher can do, and not necessarily
> one of the stronger options.
>
> Before I say more here, I want to note that I spent most of
> yesterday working with a client on an OA business model.  It
> looks promising.  More and more of my time goes into this kind of
> project.  Personally, I am agnostic about whether a service is OA
> or toll-access (though I am not keen on advertising-supported
> content services because of its corruptive nature).  What I do
> care about is that the service works and the claims for it are
> not disproportionate to its benefits.
>
> The problem is not big publishers versus small publishers.  The
> problem is that many small publishers are small because they
> think small.  A conversation about publishing on the Internet
> that begins with a statement about the low-cost nature of
> Internet dissemination is a waste of everybody's time.  To think
> big, a publisher has to focus on creating value, not counting
> pennies.  If we approached higher education the way some people
> approach digital publishing, our students would not yet have
> caught up with Watson and Crick and by current affairs we would
> mean the conference at Yalta.
>
> Small publishers can organize themselves into groups with more
> marketing clout.  They can outsource all their technology and get
> the best in the world (no in-house technology at even the largest
> commercial publishers in 2008 is as robust as what various
> service organizations now provide). They can create international
> marketing consortia; they can create their own "big deal"
> programs.  They can retain top-flight search-engine marketers to
> improve traffic and drive up citation counts. They can create
> centralized production services that will offer the benefits of
> scale.
>
> Is there a shorthand way to do all this?  Sure:  bring your
> journal to a university press, a half-dozen of which can provide
> all these services.  But you can also do these things without a
> university press umbrella.
>
> At bottom, the problem for small publishers is governance, not
> toll-access publishing or competition from commercial firms.
> Few not-for-profit academic publishers have boards that are
> really qualified to help direct a management team.  Typically
> boards are staffed with high-ranking faculty, with no experience
> in commerce, digital media, and the challenge of meeting a
> payroll.  A distinguished professor of history has as much claim
> to sit on the board of an academic publisher as the head of the
> warehouse has to be the chairman of the department of history.
> Intelligence means nothing without domain knowledge.
>
> OA is just another tool.  What matters is the hands that grasp
> that tool or any other.
>
> Joe Esposito
>