Re: No, Mandating Self-Archiving Is Not Like Invading Iraq! Part II

[Sandy Thatcher <sgt3@psu.edu>]

I haven't seen Part III yet, Stevan, but let me add just a few 
points to clarify my meaning.

I didn't intend for the Bush analogy to be "alarmist" in the 
sense you read into it. On the contrary, if anything, I'm 
supporting your point that universities should be doing 
everything they can now to put into place a system (whether based 
on self-archiving or something else--but who pays for CrossRef?) 
that will actually be able to function if the hypothesized 
withdrawal of large STM publishers were to happen suddenly, not 
be lulled into thinking that change will be gradual and will 
allow time for all parts of the system to readjust without 
undergoing any great transition pains if FRPAA were to turn out 
to be the "tipping point" after all.

I still think you are being way too optimistic to think that the 
system will reach an equilibrium again quickly and painlessly. I 
don't question that many people will see that funds will need to 
be reallocated from one purpose (subscriptions) to another 
(author fees). But I have lived in a university environment long 
enough (40 years) to realize how difficult change is to effect. 
Again, I remind you that many, many people have long recognized 
that the tenure-and-promotion system is not working the way it 
should, but it has been extremely difficult to bring about change 
of any major kind. See the new MLA Report.

It will be especially difficult to make the transition work 
smoothly if we have for an extended period of time a mixed system 
with subscriptions continuing for some journals while OA takes 
over others. Librarians may not so readily want to give up their 
funding for subscriptions when there are still many to pay for; 
or they may want to take advantage of having more funds to 
allocate to buying monographs, where their collections have 
suffered because of the burden of STM journal costs. Will it 
again come down to a struggle between scientists asking, this 
time, for libraries to pay their author fees instead of buying 
more books for the humanists? Will the outcome necessarily be the 
same? It's not a simple matter, I think.

I'm worrying, too, not just about what will happen with journals 
but what the effects on monograph publishing will be. In 
humanities, at least, it can't continue to happen that more and 
more journal literature is more widely accessible because 
available online, while the monograph literature is ever more 
segregated and confined to a small number of printed books. This 
goes against the grain of the interconnected web that knowledge 
wants to be. But, then, how does OA come to monographs? There I 
see the issue of author fees being a lot more difficult to 
resolve because the level of magnitude of cost ($20,000 to 
$25,000 for an average monograph exclusive of all costs 
associated with its physical format) is much higher. Maybe 
universities, in hiring junior faculty on the tenure track, will 
need to throw in $50,000 up front as a subsidy to get two books 
published as a requirement for tenure?  Somehow I suspect that 
the correlation between book purchases by the libraries and 
subsidies required for publishing faculty won't be quite so neat 
here, but I could be wrong. This system would have the 
advantage--as, indeed, OA does in journal publishing--of putting 
the burden for any purchase of a print form of the publication on 
the end user as an optional cost. That's the beauty of 
print-on-demand. technology for books.

--Sandy Thatcher
Penn State Press