Re: Wiley-Blackwell 2009 Subscription and Licensing Options

[<bill@multi-science.co.uk>]

If wider readership is now the goal, as against the principle of 
Open Access itself, then scholarship is better served by schemes 
like Knowledge Exchange, where a central body provides funds, 
sets the license terms, and insists that content is supplied 
cheap: everybody's happy. (Publishers who have maximum market 
share lose out; all other kinds of publishers gain). And if 
existing publishers are carrying on doing the publishing, then we 
are spared the funding wrangles and failures which would have 
been a feature of OA for the foreseeable future; and the 
sustainability of publications is assured: in the OA land, of 
every man his own publisher, I don't think its properly been 
taken on board what an effort, a strain it is sustaining over 
years and years micro journals of one sort or another. A 
publisher puts up with it because its his job, keeping the show 
on the road in the end provides his income.

Are there enough exceptional characters out there who will keep 
plugging away with a journal that hardly anyone seenms to care 
about, year after year, on top of that a continuing struggle to 
get funding? What seems more likely is that in a few years time, 
alongside the highway of scholarly communication, we are going to 
see more and more crashed OA journals, the gaskets of cash and 
enthusiasm having blown. How does that serve science?

Admittedly, widespread KE schemes would turn publishers into 
civil servants, and another raft of issues arises swith that; but 
from the library side, I can't see that raising objections, and 
would go some way to take the sting out of the charge that 
private publishers profit from the public funding of research.

Bill Hughes
Multi-Science

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Prosser" <david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2008 11:47 PM
Subject: Re: Wiley-Blackwell 2009 Subscription and Licensing Options

> Joe,there is nothing misleading in saying that these papers are
> being made OA to encourage wider readership.  No matter how many
> times you write it it doesn't make it so.  The ultimate motive of
> the wider readership may be marketing and the encouragement of
> greater subscriptions (I didn't make any claims regarding this),
> but it's wider readership nevertheless.
>
> David
>
> Joe Esposito in liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu writes:
>
>> Once again David Prosser writes a misleading post.
>>
>> Publications are not using OA to encourage wider readership.
>> They are using the equity of their branded publications, which
>> are almost in every instance (PLOS is the leading exception)
>> traditional in their economics, to promote certain ideas and
>> articles.  This is called marketing.  The form it takes is
>> product sampling.  The articles being released without charge are
>> intended to lead readers back to the originating publisher.  OA
>> has nothing to do with it.  I suppose when John D. Rockefeller
>> handed out dimes to children, some people thought he was giving
>> away his fortune.
>>
>> Joe Esposito
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "David Prosser" <david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk>
>> To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
>> Sent: Monday, October 13, 2008 4:42 PM
>> Subject: RE: Wiley-Blackwell 2009 Subscription and Licensing Options
>>
>>> Joe, really what am I misrepresenting?  I said publications are
>>> making their papers open access to encourage wider readership.
>>> That's exactly what has happened.
>>>
>>> You make the trivial point that it is easier for a branded
>>> publication to attract attention than an unbranded publication.
>>> Very true.  But that is not an OA issue, it's a branding issue.
>>> A new subscription-based journal from a new publisher will find
>>> it difficult to generate an audience.  A new subscription-based
>>> journal from a well-known (branded) publisher might find it
>>> easier.  Is it easier from a new OA journal to find an audience
>>> than a new subscription journal, all other things being equal?
>>> That is an interesting question, but not the issue I was
>>> addressing.
>>>
>>> Best wishes
>>>
>>> David Prosser
>>> Director, SPARC Europe