Audit of OA Ejournal business practices

[brs4@lehigh.edu]

Though my views continue to evolve and I retain an open mind about what
will or will not work to promote open access, at the present point it is
very clear to me (esp. after giving a talk yesterday), that the following
would greatly promote the cause of OA. It could lay the seeds, in the
present, for the gradual and agonizing Long March toward development of
university/consortial ownership of ejournal publishing.

What we need is for some non-partisan group or body to do the following.

First, it would develop a very detailed taxonomy of the different classes
of ejournals that are fully or partially OA. ("Partial OA" ejournals are
ones that have embargo periods or limitations on access to the full
current content of a journal.)

Second, it would then do a comprehensive, detailed, highly practical
"audit"  from a hard-headed business standpoint of the success or lack of
success of the resulting classes of journals from the standpoint of a list
of business parameters or metrics. The latter could include a careful
analysis of the costs incurred, sources of funding (including any
revenue-gathering schemes that support OA (such as reliance on print
revenues), efficiencies or that lack thereof in developing and maintaining
OA, and sustainability, i.e., prospects of continued maintenance of the
scheme.

Third, relying on these metrics, it would compare, from a financial
standpoint, the success of university/consortially run operations against
the success of the commercial publishers in providing open access.

Finally, it would create a set of practical recommendations for
universities or consortia interested in starting their own ejournal
operations. The published recommendations need not mention specific OA
journals by name.

The final recommendations would have both the quality of a highly detailed
investment report or prospectus plus the quality of a solid business plan.

Some examples mentioned by Susan Gibbons (see earlier posting identifying
a study by her of institutional repositories) are interesting in this
context:

dermatology.cdlib.org
www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/agt

Brian Simboli