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Re: Institutional Journal Costs in an Open Access Environment

Jan,

Your analogy makes great rhetoric, but it does not make for good argument. I did not argue that the current model of funding publishing should remain simply because it has always been that way (in the same sense that it was heresy to question the belief that the sun revolved around the earth). The current system may have its inefficiencies, but your alternative model (simply charging author fees to the institution -- be it the library or a Provost's fund), is wrought with political land mines and may challenge the academic freedom of authors.

In my scenarios, I have attempted to illustrate the following points:

1) That an unmanaged author-expense fund is open to abuse from individuals and exploitation from publishers

2) A managed author fund would be politically more sensitive than librarian-as-manager of subscriptions. It may also challenge academic freedom of authors

3) A managed author fund (as a limited resource) may be no more economically efficient than librarian-as-manager of subscriptions

Now if you can come up with a solution that benefits science, academics, AND makes finances easier to manage, I'm all ears...

P.S. I got a paper accepted to a Springer journal, but I have no grant funds. Could you waiver my $3,000 fee so I can make my article Open Access?

--Phil


At 04:58 PM 5/1/2006, Jan Velterop wrote:

This discussion is getting somewhere. The issue of paying for the literature via subscriptions or article charges reminds me of a -- no-doubt apocryphal -- story about the philosopher Wittgenstein, who one time asked a friend "Tell me, why do people always say it was natural for men to assume that the sun went round the earth, rather than that the earth was rotating?" His friend said, "Well, obviously, because it looks as if the sun is going round the earth." To which the philosopher replied, "Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as if the earth was rotating?"

It seems that the principle of paying for the literature from research overheads is not contested; just the practicalities. Phil's scenes from the Comedia Academia make a few very good points. But does the principle of paying from what's now taken as overheads necessarily imply the decision mechanisms he mets en scene? Would it not be possible to reduce overheads (in Cornell's case from, say, 58% to 56% of the grant; the reduction could eventually come from what now goes into the library budget, no?), and then let the researcher decide where to publish? The best way to approach research literature is still to regard publishing as integral to doing research and thus the cost of publishing as integral to the cost of doing research. If research is done for the common good, then why not publishing?

Btw, Phil, are there scenes like you sketch with regard to the
purchase of reagents or laboratory glassware and the like as well?

Jan Velterop