Re: Do governments subsidize journals (was: Who gets hurt by Open

[heatherm@eln.bc.ca]

Sally -

On what basis are you making this assumption?	

If you are implying that revenue contribution from the corporate sector
will decrease in an open access environment - where is your proof?  The
experience with physics journals in light of the strong self-archiving
tradition in this discipline is that ongoing subscriptions can continue to
flourish in a nearly 100% open access environment.

If any sector is likely to keep up subscriptions to publishers' versions,
with all the pretty formatting and other bells and whistles, is it not the
corporate sector?  A researcher in a smaller institution with a small
library budget, or a third world researcher, might be thrilled to be able
to read the research - just as the author wrote it.  It's the corporate
folks, wanting to present the research on which a business idea is built,
who are most likely to want to pay for the cosmetics.  Plus, they are very
likely to want any non-research material (who's doing what, etc.) - so why
worry about losing subscriptions?

If you're worried about advertising revenue - since when did advertisers
object to reaching more people?  Advertising thrives in an open access
environment - just look at google, traditional television broadcasting,
and free newspapers.

As for the percentage of revenue for STM publishers coming from the
corporate sector, estimates from experts appear to vary widely - from Jan
Velterop's less than 5% to Elsevier's (totally unsubstantiated, to my
knowledge) 25%, to your "up to half".

I discuss this topic in some detail on the SPARC Open Access Forum, out of
respect for Liblicense readers who probably prefer to read about licensing
issues, and the most closely related open access issues, rather than all
the details on a topic such as this.  My latest SOAF message is at:
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/2346.html

cheers,

Heather Morrison
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com

On Sun, 18 Sep 2005 12:10:25 EDT liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu wrote:
> The point is that the balance will shift.  More of the cost will have to
> be borne by the academic community (and thus, ultimately, the taxpayer)
> 
> Sally Morris, Chief Executive
> Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers
> Email:  sally.morris@alpsp.org
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "David Prosser" <david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk>
> To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
> Sent: Thursday, September 15, 2005 11:34 PM
> Subject: RE: Do governments subsidize journals (was: Who gets hurt by Open
> 
> > While we all have the mantra 'industry reads more than it publishers'
> > drummed into us, industry does publish and so some revenue will come
> > directly from industry.  There will also be indirect income -
> > universities are increasingly accepting industrial funding for research
> > projects conducted within the university.  Publication costs could
> > easily be included in the costs that the university charges, so
> > lightening the load on the poor taxpayer.
> >
> > (And, of course, while there may be some subject areas where a large
> > minority of the revenue comes from industry, there are others where the
> > proportion is almost zero.)
> >
> > David