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Re: Funding OA (Long-Term)

Adam, what if the costs for publication were to be reduced in half, but the output of research were to increase four-fold? Or suppose the costs dropped by 90% and the output increased 10,000%? Let's imagine that you could reduce the price of a gallon of gasoline to 30 cents, as it was when I got my first driver's license: Would you drive less or more? Or to take your example: as the cost of "international telcos" drops, will you make more calls or fewer?

Joe Esposito

----- Original Message -----
From: "adam hodgkin" <adam.hodgkin@gmail.com>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2007 4:29 PM
Subject: Re: Funding OA (Long-Term)

Thomas Krichel can answer on his own account, but his point seemed
perfectly clear to me. Efficient journals in the 21st century should have
much lower overheads than efficient journals in the mid 20th century.

Look at another economic activity -- international phone calls: I dont
know where the non-trivial costs of the international telcos are going to
come from in the next 20 years because I dont care. The need for many of
those costs will disappear because network communications costs are
dropping 30% pa (or something of that order). An efficiently organised web
journal doesn't need a secretary, a travel allowance for the editor,
postal costs, an office, off-prints, and modest or generous honoraria for
its editorial board. Those costs are 'nice to have' but they will probably
go away/have gone already. Sure some costs remain but $1,500 as an article
processing charge is probably too much to pay in the fields of library
science, philosophy, or French literature, so look for a way of taking
costs out of the system.

Aggregation and automation will decimate many of these cost centres on the
production ramp, but it would also be worth thinking about the costs on
the librarians side of the distribution slope. Are these costs also liable
to diminish as an efficient system of web-based library services develops
(Google Book Search etc)? It is at least possible. There is going to be
less need for book stacks and less need for book stackers. There will be a
move to aggregated services and centralised resourcing.

I share your (Ann's) doubt that it is appropriate for libraries to provide
editorial and production subsidies to open access journals in the
long-term. Your budget will not stretch to it.

Adam Hodgkin

On 2/7/07, Ann Okerson <aokerson@pantheon.yale.edu> wrote:

Mr. Krichel:  Could you kindly explain further your message below, i.e.,
how it is responsive to the inquiry about long-term open access funding
for high quality, peer reviewed journals?  My point was that libraries
(particularly the larger ones) are more and more being asked to
contribute significant sums of money for ongoing support, once OA
projects have passed startup funding, and that doesn't seem to me a
secure source of revenue.  To wit, since access is free, the incentives
to keep paying are not high and the financial underpinnings thus become
vulnerable.

You replied that publishers need to change their journals platforms to
less costly ones and get free Web hosting somewhere. Many small (and
larger) publishers have already done exactly that.  And, while
reasonable, the suggestion doesn't provide much help for the publishers
of quality titles, as the rest of their non-trivial costs remain to be
covered.

(Maybe we should look to our arctic-American friends for cheap labor, but
they seem pretty occupied where they are... see last week's New Yorker
cartoon, on the table of contents page. Sorry I'm contributing to the
bizarre metaphors:  pit bulls, Barbie dolls, and now penguins!)

Ann Okerson/Yale Library