RE: A Prophylactic Against the Edentation of the RCUK Policy Proposal

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

Anthony
 
We appear to be agreed on the issue that started this exchange.  The
original statement from Stevan that Joe took exception to - 'The argument
that self-archiving will lead to journal cancellations and collapse, in
contrast, is not based on objective fact but on *hypothesis*.' - is
correct.  There is no evidence.
 
For the rest, I think that the last two paragraphs of the quote from
Raym Crow says it very well:
 
"In any event, the systemic inertia inherent in the traditional scholarly
publishing paradigm suggests that one need not fear the precipitous
collapse of commercial academic publishers. The best of them will adapt
and survive under new models and will continue to perform a valuable
albeit changed role in scholarly communications."
 
Publishers respond to changes in technology and changes in the market. In
the last ten years we have seen a massive change in the technology - the
internet - and we are currently seeing a massive change in the market -
the funding bodies deciding that they wish to have wider dissemination of
the research they fund.  Publishers will adapt and survive - no doubt
aided by far-sighted consultants!
 
David
 
-----Original Message-----
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Anthony Watkinson
Sent: 08 July 2005 22:27
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: A Prophylactic Against the Edentation of the RCUK Policy
Proposal
 
A few years ago I went to a presentation on institutional repositories
where a librarian involved in setting up an IR told his audience that, of
course, the "real reason" for advocating IRs from the point of view of
librarians would be that it would enable them to cancel journals. This as
at the UKSG and he had clearly forgotten that someone like me might be in
the audience. UKSG is not a meeting for librarians only. However I do not
need to be anecdotal.
 
The more honest advocates have always claimed that a full acceptance by
the academic community of institutional repositories will destroy the
subscription model and that some publishers will go to the wall. A key
document in the SPARC arsenal (though difficult to find now if one goes in
through the SPARC home page) is the position paper on institutional
repositories by Raym Crow. You can find it at
http://www.arl.org/sparc/IR/ir.html. He models the future after
institutional repositories are in place and used and examines the impact
on publishers both commercial and not-for-profit. Speaking about publisher
fears, he writes:
 
"It would be disingenuous to suggest that such publisher concerns are not
real. Still, however disruptive the effect to existing business models,
the responsibility of universities lies in generating original scholarship
and disseminating knowledge, not in maintaining the market status quo or
protecting the financial security of publishing company shareholders. In
any event, the systemic inertia inherent in the traditional scholarly
publishing paradigm suggests that one need not fear the precipitous
collapse of commercial academic publishers. The best of them will adapt
and survive under new models and will continue to perform a valuable
albeit changed role in scholarly communications."
 
Table 2 on scholarly communication in a new disaggregated model does not
seem to leave much space for a role for publishers but let that pass. I
hope I have made the point. Publishers should be worried because they are
told they should be worried. They should also be worried on behalf of the
academic community they serve. There is little or no evidence that
academics want to overturn the existing model.
 
There is of course no "scap of empirical evidence"  because so far
academics have not take much notice of the "education" they are receiving
and not not self-archiving enough. The conditions are not there. That is
why people like Dr. Prosser want to try to force them (us) to deposit.
 
It is complete nonsense to talk about Physics. In some areas of physics
most peer-reviewed papers were in a preliminary form deposited in ArXiv as
preprints. This is informal communication. The digital revolution has
enabled preprints to become eprints. It is hardly surprising that the role
of journals had been unchallenged in that discipline. As far as we know
cancellations have not been higher than cancellations in other
disciplines.
 
At present there are few postprints in ArXiv. If all the content of a
physics journal in its final form was in arXiv any librarian would be
tempted to cancel.
 
Anthony Watkinson