A Useful Clarification of Harvard's OA Fund

[David Prosser <david.prosser@rluk.ac.uk>]

You may remember a few weeks ago Joe Esposito highlighted a post 
by one of his fellow Scholarly Kitchen bloogers, Phil Davis. 
Phil was taking exception to the narrative on journal prices put 
forward by Robert Darnton in his Three Jeremiads article  (see 
http://bit.ly/ho06Um for details).

One part of Phil's critique, although by no means the main part, 
was whether or not the COPE initiative would save Harvard 
libraries money, especially in relation to the Tetrahedron bundle 
of journals.  Stuart Shieber has responded, highlighting some of 
Phil's misunderstandings of the Harvard OA Fund and explaining 
the flaws in Phil's financial analysis.  The post is at:

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/pamphlet/2011/02/01/the-tetrahedron-test-case/

I highlight the post only because it picks up on comments already 
brought to the attention of this list.

As a general point, perhaps this highlights the dangers of 
thinking of costs and benefits in single budget lines, rather 
than across whole systems.

David