Re: Humanities and Social Sciences Journals: ideas on how to transition to OA

[Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>]

Ian Russell and I are in strong disagreement about this matter. 
I believe that anyone who wants to start an OA journal or convert 
a toll-access journal to OA should retain Ms. Morrison as a 
management consultant.

Joe Esposito


On 9/3/09 2:50 PM, "Ian Russell" <ian.russell@cytherean.co.uk> wrote:

> What a quite extraordinary post.
>
> So a careful piece of research by a well respected consultant
> with an extremely impressive knowledge of, and background in,
> academic publishing comes up with a figure of $7000 for the
> average processing fee for the journals examined and in a few
> paragraphs of waffle Heather has reduced this to zero.
>
> I guess that the assumption by Heather that 45% of the publishing
> costs for all HSS journals can be met from advertising revenue
> tells you all you need to know.  Anyone with any knowledge of
> publishing would find this ridiculous.
>
> Then again, perhaps the title of Heather's blog tells you all you
> need to know, or perhaps it should just be shortened to Imaginary
> Economics...
>
> Ian Russell
> ALPSP
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> [mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Heather Morrison
> Sent: 02 September 2009 23:20
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Subject: Humanities and Social Sciences Journals: ideas on how to transition
> to OA
>
> Following are some thoughts on how humanities and social sciences
> publishers can move forward toward open access, inspired by Mary
> Waltham's brave preliminary foray into research on the economics
> of these journals, The Future of Scholarly Journals Publishing
> among Social Science and Humanities Associations, available for
> download from:
>
> http://www.nhalliance.org/news/humanities-social-science-scholarly-journal-p
> ublis.shtml
>
> In brief: Humanities and social sciences publishers might wish to
> consider the marketing advantage of OA in positioning their
> associations / societies and journals for the future. Members of
> scholarly societies are scholars. Open access works to the
> advantage of these scholar-members, who likely have many reasons
> for belonging to a society, such as fulfilling the service
> component of expectations for an academic. Why not actively
> engage members in the transition? This could be helpful not only
> to transition journals to open access, but also healthy for the
> association, too.
>
> Institutional subscribers - libraries and consortia - are vocal
> advocates of open access. Why not engage them in discussion about
> how to transition? For example, would they consider hybrid
> site-license / open choice approaches? Since this is a priority
> for libraries, would moves like this help to protect society
> publishers from cancellations in these difficult economic times?
> This post re-analyzes Waltham's data on the feasibility of an
> article processing fee approach for the 8 journals studied. It is
> suggested that self-selection of journals may have resulted in
> high-end rather than average costs. Factoring in advertising
> revenue, it seems possible that the publication cost for
> online-only for even these high-end journals with rejection rates
> in the range of 90%, could be well under $1,000. Assuming that
> members and institutional subscribers continue to support the
> journals / associations, needed APFs could be reduced
> substantially, perhaps to 0. Which is indeed, what most OA
> journals charge: nothing! Waltham's 8 non-OA journals are
> contrasted with 716 journals listed in DOAJ under the same
> general subject areas.
>
> For details, please see The Imaginary Journal of Poetic
> Economics, at:
>
> http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2009/09/humanities-and-social-sciences-t
> houghts.html
>
> Heather Morrison, MLIS
> The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
> http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com
> Associate Editor, Scholarly and Research Communication
> http://www.src-online.ca/