RE: "Overlay Journals" Over Again...

[Sandy Thatcher <sgt3@psu.edu>]

The scare quotes were meant to indicate that the "taxing" 
authority may not be a political entity at all, but rather some 
relevant association, such as the AAU, NASULGC, etc. This may 
turn out to be private policy, rather than public policy. In 
fact, I think that this is the more likely path this kind of 
cost-sharing will take--just as it was a group of universities 
themselves that voluntarily decided to set up the system of 
scholarly communication we have now, by establishing and 
supporting presses.

Sandy Thatcher
Penn State University Press


> The larger population does indeed need to be taxed in some way. I see no 
> reason to put quotation marks around the word "taxed" when we are talking 
> about literal instances of public policy. We don't say that a country needs 
> to "defend" itself or that we want "safe streets."
> 
> Joe Esposito
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> [mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Sandy Thatcher
> Sent: Thursday, July 02, 2009 8:16 PM
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Subject: RE: "Overlay Journals" Over Again...
> 
> Uh, just who is this "larger population" supposed to be, and 
> what will motivate it to step forward and provide the necessary 
> funds for this "central approach"?
> 
> One lesson we have learned from over 100 years of university 
> press publishing is that the few supply the benefits for the 
> many. Some 80 universities pay the costs of having university 
> presses whose publications benefit the entire scholarly 
> community. The other 3,000+ institutions of higher education 
> all get a free ride.
> 
> What reason is there to believe that there will be more 
> equitable distribution of support for OA publishing than there 
> has been for traditional market-based publishing?
> 
> Maybe this "larger population" needs to be "taxed" in some way?
> 
> Sandy Thatcher
> Penn State University Press
> 
> 
> > The best way to both remove any conflict of interest and 
> > develop a scalable peer review support infrastructure on a 
> > less expensive OA server platform is to have a central server 
> > for materials supported by a centralized payment scheme. 
> > One collection agency (imagine something like SPARC, or 
> > SCOAP3 by discipline) could make direct payments to the 
> > hosting service (reducing the overhead now found in the 
> > multiple/redundant payments from each and every current 
> > subscription organization). How we efficiently funnel funds 
> > from a few big government revenue sources and endowments to 
> > this agent is a key question, but SCOAP3 is showing this 
> > approach might be viable. Remove author fees and use central 
> > revenue support, as the readers have a great deal to gain 
> > from the material and should share in the support costs.
> > 
> > One central server (or a few mirrored servers for backup) 
> > removes the redundancy, extra effort and unnecessary 
> > duplication within an institutional server model.  This 
> > central approach is best for published material ... locally 
> > developed teaching and research material can still be housed 
> > on institutional servers if we can guarantee long-term 
> > support.
> > 
> > (My belief is that discipline based servers have a better 
> > chance of long-term support as budgets get tight -- as there 
> > is more of a societal commitment to these collaborative 
> > approaches.)
> > 
> > Peer review separated from payment by authors, subsidized by 
> > the larger population, and housed on the most economical 
> > platforms. Overlay is apparently a loaded term, so let's 
> > remove it from the conversation but keep the conversation on 
> > target to show that OA WITH PEER REVIEW servers will impact 
> > commercial journals.
> > 
> > David