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

["Anthony Watkinson" <anthony.watkinson@btopenworld.com>]

I repeat. It seems obvious to me that if all published articles are in
(searchable) repositories, the current subscription model is not viable
because no sensible library will want to pay for subscriptions. Nothing
that Steve (in his rather messianic posting) says below seems to me in any
way to explain why my understanding is incorrect. I do not know what he
means by my being a "publisher insider". I am a part-time publisher. I
have spent most of my working life in publishing. Indeed I probably put
the first print journal online - Journal of Materials Science in 1994. It
was a mistake as it so happens and those who moved more slowly were not
being myopic but were waiting for the marketplace to be ready.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Hitchcock" <sh94r@ecs.soton.ac.uk>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Friday, July 15, 2005 10:45 PM
Subject: Re: A Prophylactic Against the Edentation of the RCUK Policy
Proposal

> Raym Crow's was an article of its time. It reflected a debate that had
> been going on for some years previously that was about the functions of
> journal publishing and how these might be effectively accommodated in an
> online model. So this focussed on peer review, production, marketing,
> dissemination, etc., and various new models were postulated, but the
> debate was always principally concerned with improving access.
>
> Informed by that debate, issues concerning access have crystallised.
> Improving access is now framed as 'open access'. This has built on the
> Budapest Open Access Initiative of February 2002. This is effectively what
> the RCUK has endorsed, but with the emphasis clearly on author
> self-archiving in IRs. This is the fastest route to OA and allows it to
> co-exist with traditional journal publishing, as well as emerging OA
> publishing, because it is wholly concerned with access while leaving the
> value-adding role to the publisher. Journals are not 'disaggregated'.
>
> Disaggregation did not and does not need to happen because most publishers
> have given the green light for authors to provide immediate open access by
> self-archiving *their* versions of papers in IRs. Nothing else is needed
> from publishers.
>
> Separately, and in addition, some publishers began providing free back
> access to the *journal* versions of papers some time after publication.
> Then in the midst of the NIH proposal this apparent concession to back
> access became a bargaining ploy, and no doubt will again in the ongoing
> RCUK consultation. Why? Because for some publishers that's all there is
> left to argue over. They haven't been able to keep up even with their own
> industry. The principle of OA, and the green light, is established.
> Neither of these positions - green, or back access - were forced on
> publishers, by NIH, RCUK, or other bodies. The publishers did it
> themselves after, presumably, careful assessment of the market.
>
> So I'm not sure why Anthony, a publisher insider, is going back to dated
> work, from which both the academic community and most publishers have
> since moved on, to argue against something that hasn't happened as a
> pretext for the case against the RCUK policy. The RCUK has evolved a clear
> policy based on what is already there.
>
> Are publishers going to return exclusively to print journals? Of course
> not. But when in the mid-1990s publishers began making the move from
> experiment to production of online journals the myopic few comforted
> themselves that they could return to the old ways if things didn't work
> out. Then, as now, the clearest thinking prevailed.
>
> We are beyond that stage with OA. There is no turning back. OA and green
> are good. The academic community is waking up to the good news, proclaimed
> by RCUK, and that's a starting point with plenty of scope for publishers
> to take their work on from there. Despite Anthony's and others'
> forthcoming protestations, I think they already know that.
>
> Steve Hitchcock
> IAM Group, School of Electronics and Computer Science
> University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK
> Email: sh94r@ecs.soton.ac.uk
> Tel: +44 (0)23 8059 3256    Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 2865