Re: ALPSP Response to RCUK Policy Proposal

[Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>]

Is there no way to put an end to this foolish ranting?  Of course a
self-archived version of a publication competes with a formally published
one.  Of course the martket is not entirely efficient.  Of course
publishers typically acquire not only the "value-added version" of a
publication (a meaningless phrase) but the underlying version as well.  
Of course no one will pay for what they can't profit from.  Self-
archiving and Open Access are fine things, but let's grow up and stop
asserting that these things can coexist peacefully with traditional
publishing.  These are parallel universes.  Over time one will prevail,
but not both.

Joe Esposito

On 7/1/05, Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:

> >  ALPSP encourages the widest possible dissemination of research
> >  outputs; indeed, this furthers the mission of most learned societies
> >  to advance and disseminate their subject and to advance public
> >  education. We understand the benefits to research of maximum access
> >  to prior work...
> 
> An excellent beginning!
> 
> >  ALPSP recognises that maximising access must be done in ways which
> >  do not undermine the viability either of the peer-reviewed journals
> >  in which the research is published
> 
> No one would disagree with this either.
> 
> >  Understandably, therefore, [publishers] may not wish their
> >  "value-added" version to be made freely available in repositories
> >  immediately on publication.
> 
> Quite understandable, and self-archiving is accordingly *not* about the
> publisher's value-added version -- not the copy-editing, not the XML
> markup, not the publisher's PDF -- but only about the own author's
> preprint (unrefereed draft) and postprint (corrected final draft). That is
> what is to be made freely available in repositories.
> 
> >  Even if the freely available version lacks some or all of the value
> >  added by the publisher, it may be treated as an adequate substitute
> >  by uninformed readers
> 
> The freely avialable version is intended for the use of those potential
> researcher/users worldwide whose institutions cannot afford access to the
> publisher's value-added version. It is accordingly a more than adequate
> substitute for informed users who do not have acccess to any other
> version!
> 
> >  (and, indeed, by cash-strapped libraries). And any new model
> >  which has the potential to "siphon off" a significant percentage
> >  of otherwise paying customers will, understandably, undermine the
> >  financial viability of all these value-adding activities.
> 
> Surely the financial viability of the values-added is determined by their
> market value. As long as the added values have a market value, they remain
> viable. All evidence to date is that the self-archived free versions
> co-exist peacefully with the publishers' value-added versions, serving as
> supplements for those who cannot afford access to the value-added version
> rather than substitutes for those who can:
> 
>     "[W]e asked the American Physical Society (APS) and the Institute of
>     Physics Publishing Ltd (IOPP) what their experiences have been over
>     the 14 years that arXiv has been in existence. How many subscriptions
>     have been lost as a result of arXiv? Both societies said they could
>     not identify any losses of subscriptions for this reason and that
>     they do not view arXiv as a threat to their business (rather the
>     opposite -- in fact the APS helped establish an arXiv mirror
>     site at the Brookhaven National Laboratory)."

[SNIP]