Re: 100% Self-Archiving and Journal Subscriptions: a critique

[JOHANNES VELTEROP <velteropvonleyden@btinternet.com>]

David does hit the nail on the head. Even if librarians would be
able to afford paying for a subscription to material that's
openly and freely available elsewhere, its not realistic to
expect them to engage in this kind of charity, and even if they
wish to, they will not be allowed to by their masters.  Some,
perhaps, can afford to sit back and wait. Publishers can't, but
I'm not sure if librarians (esp. serials librarians) can afford
to just sit and wait, either. David may agree. After all, he put
a 'perhaps' in his sentence. Their role is one of intermediary,
and doesn't full OA, with subscriptions cancelled, seriously
disintermediate them?

Jan Velterop

----- Original Message ----

From: David Goodman <dgoodman@Princeton.EDU>
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Sent: Wednesday, 22 November, 2006 8:44:16 PM
Subject: 100% Self-Archiving and Journal Subscriptions: a critique

I am very pleased to see Stevan's long-awaited agreement about 100%.

The next question, asked by the Ware survey but not Beckett &
Inger, is what will happen at 95% and at 90%, which are levels,
which is practice can be reached by mandatory self-archiving, as
CERN has demonstrated.

It seems Stevan would make a rather conservative librarian, for
about half of libraries would cancel earlier than 100%. Ware
found (question 15) that 52 percent of libraries would cancel by
somewhere between 90 and 99%.

But that too is not the exact situation that will be posed in
Areal life, which is: if at 90% OA, libraries see half of their
similar libraries cancelling, would they cancel as well? And,
since libraries do not make the decision how much money they can
spend, if libary funders -- institutions, boards, legislatures --
see half of comparable libraries canceling, would they continue
to allot money for the subscriptions that some libraries might
nonetheless want to continue? (This has been sometimes referred
to as the tipping-point problem.)

Of course, we are far from this situation, but I pity the
publisher who does not start realistic planning for it now.
Stevan, and I, don't need to, and neither perhaps do
libraries--we can await the event. Publishers can't.

David Goodman