Summary Paper from the Publishing Research Consortium

[Heather Morrison <heatherm@eln.bc.ca>]

This paper is based on flawed research, as it is based on 
librarian purchasing preferences, but omits key factors: 
research and educational priorities of the university, and 
faculty assessment of the importance of journals.  It is when we 
take the latter factor into account that we can understand the 
experience of physics, where nearly 100% open access through 
self-archiving has peacefully coexisted with a subscription-based 
system for more than 15 years.

My original comment to the SPARC Open Access Forum, November 14, 
2006:

This study is interesting, however as a librarian my comment is 
that the assumptions underlying the study illustrate a lack of 
understanding of the basic decision-making process of the 
academic librarian collections specialist.

This study looks at 6 attributes and assesses librarian 
preferences, in an attempt to predict cancellations of 
subscriptions in favor of open access materials if articles are 
available in archives.

Elements of the model examined:
Version of Article
Percentage of a Journal's Articles that are Available
Reliability of Access
How up-to-date is the content
Quality of the content
Cost

The problem with this, is that the primary factors determining 
collections decisions are not taken into account:  research and 
educational priorities of the university, and faculty assessment 
of the importance of journals.  When we take these factors into 
account, we can see why it makes sense that librarians continue 
to subscribe to physics journals, even when prices are considered 
high and virtually all of the articles are available for free in 
arXiv.

In other words, the answers this study have found really do not 
matter, because it did not ask the right questions.  Research 
into librarians' collections decisions might be best led by 
librarians.

Original post at:
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/3450.html

More discussion about this study, including comments from one of the
principal investigators, Chris Beckett, can be found in the SPARC
Open Access Forum Archives for November 2006.

Any opinion expressed in this message is that of the author 
alone, and does not reflect the opinion or policy of the BC 
Electronic Library Network or Simon Fraser University Library.

Heather Morrison
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com