RE: Ann Okerson on institutional archives

["David Goodman" <David.Goodman@liu.edu>]

On what rationale does Stevan consider that the "would-be users whose
institutions cannot afford the journal's official version" deserve access
only to the less-than-final version his preferred form of OA would
provide?

Does he mean that only those at rich institutions deserve the real
articles, and the rest can make do with substitutes? Or does he mean that
the differences between the official and the OA versions are so small that
the OA readers are not disadvantaged?

If he means the later, and I believe he does, then on what basis does he
think the rich institutions should pay for the official version? They
would be buying what they do not need, what apparently nobody actually
needs. He can only intend that the rich institutions buy the official
version solely for the purpose of funding the overall system. Ann, and
others at such institutions, not unreasonably object. They may at best
have sufficient funds to cover their share, but this form of OA expects
them to pay for everybody.

If all we really need is peer review, is the rest of the journals system
an expensive and unnecessary byproduct ?

Dr. David Goodman
Associate Professor
Palmer School of Library and Information Science
Long Island University
dgoodman@liu.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu on behalf of Stevan Harnad
Sent: Sun 3/27/2005 10:06 PM
To: Subbiah Arunachalam
Subject: Re: Ann Okerson on institutional archives

On Sat, 26 Mar 2005, Subbiah Arunachalam wrote:

> Friends:
> "Ann Okerson weighs the pros and cons of OA for US research
> libraries,
> noting that institutional repositories are likely to be expensive, and
> their focus in the U.S. is likely to be on locally produced scholarly
> materials other than articles. Consequently: "It is unlikely that
> under this kind of scenario in the US, scattered local versions of STM
> articles would compete effectively with the completeness or the value
> that the publishing community adds." She also suggests that library
> cost savings resulting from OA journals are "unlikely, unless
> substantial production cost reductions can be realised by many
> categories of publisher."  - in Serials: The Journal for the Serials
> Community 18(1)(2005).
>
> Why does Ann Okerson, a respected and knowledgeable US academic
> librarian, think that institutional repositories will be expensive? What
> are the facts? Will leading institutions that have set up institutional
> archives tell her and others how much does it cost to set up archives
> and run them. Arun

The facts are all contrary to what Ann Okerson states. Not only are
institutional archives not *likely* to be expensive, those that actually
exist are de facto not expensive at all (a $2000 linux server, a few days sysad set-up time, and a few days a year maintenance). Their focus in
= the US and elsewhere is likely to be exactly on what university policy decides it should be (and the Berlin 3 recommendation, likely to be widely
= adopted now, is that the focus should be on university article output).
And the purpose of self-archiving is not and never has been to "compete
effectively with the completeness or the value that the publishing
community adds." It is to provide access to those would-be users whose
institutions cannot afford the journal's official version.

Stevan Harnad