Re: Chronicle Article: John Ewing/American Math Society

[Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>]

On Tue, 28 Sep 2004, Liblicense-L Listowner wrote:

> Several readers of this list have suggested that Dr. Ewing's article in
> the CHE is worth a look.
>
> John Ewing, "Open Access to Journals Won't Lower Prices" Chronicle of
> Higher Education. October 1 2004.
> 
> http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i06/06b02001.htm

One would have to go a long way to find such an ill-informed article!

Just 3 fairly simple propositions are enough to highlight the article's
sweeping (and familiar) errors:

(1) The journal pricing/affordability problem and the journal-article
access/impact problem are not the same problem.  
http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/21.html

(100% Open Access [OA] is -- and is meant to be -- the solution to the
access/impact problem, not the pricing/affordability problem. But with
100% OA, the pricing/affordability problem would immediatly become a far
less urgent and critical matter for the research community.)

(2) OA is not the same as OA journal publishing (and its cost-recovery
model); and OA journal publishing is not the way most OA is being
provided: authors self-archiving their own articles (published in non-OA
journals) is.

(3) But even if (3a) OA journal publishing *were* the only way to provide
OA, and even if (3b) 100% of journals converted to OA, and even if (3c)
this did not lead to any reduction in journal costs -- [premise 3a is
false and premises 3b and 3c are highly unlikely, but even if all three
were true] -- the 100% OA and maximized research impact that would result
from this redistribution of exactly the same costs would *still* be a huge
benefit for science and scholarship.

(But the fact is that far more OA is coming from self-archiving today, and
the likelihood is that OA self-archiving will soon be mandated, which will
then generate 100% OA. One could speculate about what eventual long-term
effects that 100% OA might or might not have on journal pricing and
cost-recovery models too, but at this point it is actual self-archiving
and OA that are needed, with certainty, not hypothetical
future-conditionals.) http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php

See also Peter Suber's excellent critique of the Ewing article:

"Another straw-man argument"
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2004_09_26_fosblogarchive.html#a109633031745489871

Stevan Harnad