RE: Thoughts on the House of Commons report

["David Prosser" <david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk>]

Notwithstanding Adam's comments, Fred's point is right.  Some societies
(such as the ACS, I'm sure) offer a wide range if benefits to members.
However, if the only benefit is cheap access to a journal then it is
interesting to ask what the point of that society is in an open access
environment!

In this debate it might be useful to acknowledge that there is a huge
variation in the nature and scope of societies.  For example. Adam writes
' And that wide range of benefits, to members and to research at large
(via educational programs and the like) are largely funded by journal
subscriptions'.  However, the (admittedly small number) survey of
societies carried out on behalf of ALPSP showed that a third of responding
societies made no surplus and of those that did make a surplus three
quarters made less than 20% of the society's total income through
journals.  So for these societies at least, member benefits are not being
largely funded by journal subscriptions.  (The survey is at
http://www.alpsp.org/news/NFPsurvey-summaryofresults.pdf).

Another point is that open access is not anti-surplus.  There is no reason
why a society that is offering a good service to authors should not make a
surplus on its publishing programme.  It may be that the levels of surplus
are reduced, but equally for some societies they may be increased!  Small
societies in particular, who do not have the content to put together big
deals and cannot afford the expensive sales forces needed to sell them,
may benefit from a move to open access as they are directly selling their
services to author.  Care of authors and publication of high impact
journals have traditionally been areas where societies have excelled
compared to commercial publishers and they will probably be the areas
where they can excel in an open access environment.

Best wishes

David C Prosser PhD
Director, SPARC Europe
E-mail:	david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Adam Chesler
Sent: 22 July 2004 22:43
To: 'liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu'
Subject: RE: Thoughts on the House of Commons report

I'll only comment on point #5:  learned societies offer numerous benefits
beyond subsidized journals.  And that wide range of benefits, to members
and to research at large (via educational programs and the like) are
largely funded by journal subscriptions.  Remove those journals and those
subscriptions -- and the relatively modest surplus they generate -- and
you eliminate those programs as well.  It's facile to assume that funding
from alternative sources (meetings, advertising) are easily substituted:

if they were, subscription costs to society publications would be even
less than they are now.

The point is, there's more to a society than pumping out journal issues.

The question that I keep coming back to is, is the problem with the
subscription model, or is the raw expense associated with paying for it?
And if it's the latter, then open access (at least as currently
defined/practiced) won't resolve the problem, because the money presently
available to institutions for buying published material isn't going to
increase when it's used to subsidize the publication of that material via
"memberships."  Most society journals represent a reasonable cost and
generate modest surpluses that go right back into the community.  
Discarding the model, and removing that source of funding, eliminates far
more than annual access fees.

Adam Chesler
American Chemical Society
a_chesler@acs.org