RE: Universal University Open Access Mandates Moot The Problem of Uncontrolled Journal Price Inflation Caused By Inelastic Demand

["Ian Russell" <ian.russell@cytherean.co.uk>]

Except your starting assumption is incorrect.  The "uncontrolled 
inflationary spiral" is a myth.  Price-per-page and 
price-per-article are falling and continue to do so.

What keeps increasing is the number of papers being produced by 
the academy and it is this that drives the increasing overall 
costs of scholarly publishing.

If Gold OA constrains the amount of papers produced, and if 
that's really what the academy wants, then bring it on.

Ian Russell
ALPSP

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
Sent: 02 September 2009 23:11
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Universal University Open Access Mandates Moot The Problem of
Uncontrolled Journal Price Inflation Caused By Inelastic Demand

** Apologies for Cross-Posting **

Stuart Shieber, architect of Harvard's OA Mandate, asks: "Do we
continue the status quo, which involves only supporting a
business model known to be subject to uncontrolled inflationary
spirals, or do we experiment with new mechanisms that have the
potential to be economically sound and far more open to boot?"

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/pamphlet/2009/08/31/more-on-academic-freedom-an
d-oa-funds/comment-page-1/#comment-152

The answer is simple: The only reason the uncontrolled inflation
of journal subscription costs is a problem at all (and also the
reason the upward spiral continues uncontrolled) is the planet's
universities' inelastic demand and need for access to the journal
articles.

Hence the solution is for universities -- the universal providers
of all those journal articles -- to provide Open Access (free
online access) to them by mandating that their peer-reviewed
final drafts be deposited in their institutional repositories
immediately upon acceptance for publication.

Universal OA self-archiving moots the problem of uncontrolled
subscription-cost inflation by putting an end to the inelasticity
of the demand: If your university cannot afford the subscription
price for journal X, your users will still have access to the OA
version.

There is no need for universities to try to reform journal
economics directly now. What is urgently needed, universally
reachable, and already long overdue is universal OA
self-archiving mandates from universities. Focusing instead on
reforming journal business models is simply distracting from and
hence delaying the fulfillment of this pressing need.

Harvard should focus all its energy and prestige on
universalizing OA self-archiving mandates rather than dissipating
it superfluously on journal economics and OA funds.

Once OA self-archiving is universal, journal economics will take
care of itself.

[SNIP]

Stevan Harnad