RE: Who gets hurt by Open Access?

[<Toby.GREEN@oecd.org>]

Not quite right. The industries remained (transport, lighting) and each is
now far larger than they once were. It's just that the technologies they
use changed. During the change many of the established companies failed to
adapt in time, so they died away, to be replaced by newcomers (and many of
the newcomers failed too because they didn't find a sustainable business
model).

In specialist publishing some of the established players are trying to
adapt (Springer, Blackwells, OUP each with author-paying programmes) as
well as newcomers having a go (BioMed Central, PLoS, arXiv et al). On top
of this universities seem on the brink of expanding their publishing
efforts via repositories. Each of these better-funded players can afford
to experiment and take risks with new business models (ie they can afford
to pay for some failures). So, I think Joe is right about the small
established players (Societies & others) because their much smaller
resources mean they can't afford to take risks that might fail - so in
making a jump-change they have perhaps only one chance to get it right,
and that's a risky call!

What is certain is that the publishing industry will remain - the
uncertainty is who the surviving players will be when the current period
of change completes its cycle.

Toby Green
Head of Dissemination and Marketing
OECD Publishing
Public Affairs and Communications Directorate
http://www.oecd.org/Bookshop 
http://www.SourceOECD.org  - our award-winning e-library
http://www.oecd.org/OECDdirect  - our new title alerting service
+33 1 45 24 94 15 (phone)/ 53 (fax)
2 rue Andr� Pascal, 75775 Paris Cedex 16, France

Find out more about our new Factbook, a compilation of 100 statistical
indicators from across the OECD's work complete with downloadable Excel
spreadsheets: http://www.oecd.org/publications/factbook


-----Original Message-----
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Jan Szczepanski.
Sent: 18 July, 2005 10:26 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: Who gets hurt by Open Access?

Once upon the time

horse and carriage was the main means of transport then came the automobile.
A whole industry unfortunately disappeared and unfortunately a new one
emerged. The same thing happended with the oil-lamp industry. Large or small
didn't matter they all disappeared.

Jan Szczepanski
Frste bibliotekarie
Goteborgs universitetsbibliotek
E-mail: Jan.Szczepanski@ub.gu.se