RE: Journal puchase, journal licensing and the growth in open access

["Ken Masters" <kmasters@ithealthed.com>]

Hi All

As an academic, I take heart from Bill's assertion that 
librarians can negotiate more strongly on some of these issues, 
especially when publishers wish to terminate access to 
previously-accessed literature. (Although the first time I heard 
it, I didn't laugh, but nearly cried - and was tempted to 
download back-copies of the journals like crazy.) Because, in my 
opinion, although the _negotiator_ is the librarian, the 
_customer_ is the reader - in academic institutions, this means 
(primarily) academic staff and students.

I do, though, have a question for Bill, and perhaps others who 
feel the same way.  Bill says that Open Access is "an answer 
which just won't work beyond the short term."  Given that Open 
Access has been around for (about) 15 years, and doesn't yet show 
any signs of slowing, what is considered "short-term"?  I don't 
mean this question rhetorically or sarcastically, I'm asking in 
all seriousness - would you see OA lasting for another 20 years 
or less?

Because a trend that I seem to see is that more and more 
previously non-open access journals are offering articles and 
entire editions as OA.  It's a completely non-scientific 
impression, based purely on personal observations of the journals 
I access, but the image I have is that the OA waters are rising 
every day, and the non-OA journals are continually retreating to 
higher ground, relinquishing more and more of their islands to 
OA, and soon the only recourse may be to climb very tall trees.

Regards

Ken

Dr. Ken Masters
Asst. Professor: Medical Informatics
Medical Education Unit
College of Medicine & Health Sciences
Sultan Qaboos University
Sultanate of Oman
E-i-C: The Internet Journal of Medical Education


> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: Journal puchase, journal licensing and the growth in open
> access
> From: <bill@multi-science.co.uk>
> Date: Wed, September 01, 2010 7:03 am
> To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
>
> Publishers like us have no problem with libraries buying 
> electronic content. Why should the mere change of format, from 
> print to electronic, necessarily completely change the nature 
> of the transaction? Indeed, when I first heard of a publisher 
> cutting off online access to earlier content because the 
> library had failed to renew, I nearly fell off my chair 
> laughing. That publishers have such effrontery, and that 
> librarians fall for it, amazes me. Yes, big publishing rips off 
> libraries horribly. But the answer is not Open Access, the 
> answer is for librarians to remember that they are the market, 
> that they the customer are King, and that they should be 
> dictating the terms. Open Access is a very complicated answer 
> to a very simple problem. And its also an answer which just 
> won't work beyond the short term, and the fact that 'we have 
> the technology' does not mean it necessarily will work. And 
> another answer is to spend more of your money with publishers 
> who are not quite so ethically challenged.
>
> Bill Hughes
> Director
> Multi-Science Publishing Co Ltd