Re: a preservation experience

[Keith Seitter <kseitter@ametsoc.org>]

Steve,

Let me try again.  I apologize up front for the length of this message,
but perhaps I can be more clear if not so brief.

First, a critical assumption that underlies my view on this is that I
believe an archive and preservation activity following the guidelines set
forth in Eileen Fenton's message will require considerable and ongoing
resources.  A great deal has been written about the sorts of technological
standards that archive databases will need to implement to provide
consistent and reliable access.  Even for those publishers providing good
SGML/XML content there will be filtering and conversion issues when
content is loaded, and for those publishers providing less good content
the costs of ingestion will be much higher.  The long-term maintenance of
the archive, with quality control and migration issues, will have costs
that are hard to forecast but could be very significant.

Given this assumption, any institution or organization taking on the role
of an electronic archive will need a business model that provides
continuing and probably significant levels of funding.  So, when I say "I
end up coming back to some mechanism that would have them receiving funds
in exchange for providing access to their archived materials" what I mean
is that the sorts of business models I can envision are ones that have the
archive selling access to its content in one or more ways as a means of
generating operating revenue for the archiving activity.  One could think
of the archive as a grand aggregator of journals that could offer access
to its content through subscriptions, document delivery, etc., in very
much the same way that Ingenta, Ovid, and other similar aggregators do.  
A critical difference, of course, is that the mission of the archive would
be quite different than the mission of a commercial aggregator, but many
components of the business model could be similar.

Now, if I am an organization or institution whose operating revenue
depends on my ability to charge for access to the content I hold in my
database, I think I would be a lot more comfortable if the publishers were
also charging for that content and not providing it freely to all.  It may
be that libraries and others would continue to gladly pay for access
through my archive rather than linking to the publishers' free content
because of the convenience I can provide, or perhaps because of
value-added tools that my site can implement.  If so, that is terrific and
open access poses no additional challenge to the archival activity.

So, Steve, what I am trying to say is subtly different than your
paraphrase of my words as "subscription journals can support archiving but
open access journals can't."  I am not suggesting that subscription
journals directly "support" archiving, but that the competition they offer
against an archive-as-aggregator business model does not undermine that
business model in the same way that open access journals would appear to
do.  My guess is that the current commercial aggregators are facing the
same issues.  If they find that their customers will pay for access
through them to open access journals, then my concerns are completely
unfounded.  And if folks more creative than I am can think of ways to
provide stable funding for archives that eliminates this concern, all the
better.

Again, my original message and these follow up ones are not intended to
argue against open access publishing, but to point out that open access
publishing impacts the potential business models that could support
long-term archive and preservation activities.

Keith Seitter
Deputy Executive Director
American Meteorological Society


At 06:27 PM 11/11/2003 -0500, you wrote:
> Keith, You appear to be saying exactly the same as in your original
> posting. You imply that subscription journals can support archiving but
> open access journals can't, without providing justification for either
> position.
>
> Perhaps if you can clarify this statement it might help:
>
> > I end up coming back to some mechanism that would have them receiving 
> > funds in exchange for providing access to their archived materials.
> Steve