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Re: OA - What cost? What value?

Green OA:

Cost: Negligible
Value: Doubles research impact
How: Mandate Green OA
When: Now

(Then, afterward, go back to debating and speculating about the future of publishing and the Green, Gold and Other options; not now; not instead; not while Green OA is already fully within reach and there is nothing to lose and everything to gain -- a and time is passing and passing and... )

P.S. OA is not about publishing costs, it's about research access and impact loss, needlessly continuing day upon week upon month upon year, year in and year out, as we just keep on rehashing the same old hypothetical conditionals instead of doing the obvious, practical, doable, and grotesquely overdue...

On 12-Apr-07, at 7:28 PM, Armbruster, Chris wrote:

Much debate about the value and cost of OA seems to rest on the
shared assumption that the Oldenbourg model of scholarly
communication (conjoining peer review and dissemination) was
suitably transposed from to paper to electronic format and might
now be switched to OA (free to readers).

Will this assumption hold in the internet galaxy?

Notions of "Gold" and "Green" OA seem to reinforce this
assumption.  Officially, Green OA is premised on the Oldenbourg
model and merely aims to duplicate publications in open
repositories (which would increase overall costs by the factor
"green"). Gold OA does away with duplication and will lead to a
reallocation of funds to pay publication charges. Whether this
will reduce overall cost depends on whether a) much Gold OA
publishing might be not-for profit (as there is evidence that
not-for-profit publishers charge less) and/or b) a more efficient
market might emerge in which journal might be substitutes for
each other (this is likely to be the case only for the B-list,
but that is the vast majority of journals).

One can understand the reluctance of "content holding" publishers
to consider Gold OA - for their shareholders would surely not be
pleased if profits were sacrificed voluntarily. As regards Green
OA, the argument is whether this threatens the Oldenbourg model
(in sense of enabling publishers to recoup their costs and/or
make a profit). In detail, the argument is then about the length
of the embargo.

But, is this the only, or best, way to look at the issue?

Take the argument about Green OA leading to cancellations. To
claim that cancellations are likely in future is to make an
argument about the logic of the internet galaxy. But if you do
so, should you then not recognise that several large and
important scholarly communication platforms are free to authors
and readers? ArXiv, RePEc and SSRN do cost something, but their
successful growth over the past ten years signals that a
cost-efficient way of organising dissemination is available. Part
of the logic of the internet galaxy is to make dissemination
cheap -- and in this sense Green OA would indeed threaten those
publishers that believe their mission to be to hold (or own)
content

Yet, another part of the logic of the internet would seem to be
that in scholarly communication "content holding" is a shrinking
business model. It is so, because toll-access reduces inclusion
and impact in scholarly communication. Once Open Access is
possible, then the toll-access publishers needlessly impede
scholarly communication. That is why the argument against content
holding publishers will never go away.

Moreover, cyberscience (or eScience) and related developments
make open access to research publications and data intrinsically
desirable. In this case OA is not a matter of cost, but a
prerequisite to the future advancement of science.

Is Gold OA the best way forward?

In the life sciences a good case can be made for releasing only
peer-reviewed information. But ArXiv, RePEc and SSRN demonstrate
that for other sciences this is not the case. The technological
and economic logic of the internet galaxy favours the severance
of certification from dissemination.

Indeed, if we were utilise the internet to maximise savings for
dissemination, then relatively large sums of money could be
redirected to where most needed: improved certification, enhanced
literature awareness tools and the development of overlay
services such as text mining. Such services cost money and one
possible business model might be to recoup costs through
subscriptions (please note that BMC as OA publisher also has
subscriptions to pay charges) that, depending on the service,
charge funders, authors, readers or libraries.

Indeed, if we follow through with the switch in vision from
"content" to "service" then we see that there is not a shrinking
market (of higher prices, more cancellations) but much terrain
for business development. In this context, early estimates of the
impact of OA in terms of economic growth and market value
indicate that certification and services for the readers and
users of research articles and data -- in science, higher
education, knowledge-based industries and so on -- will
experience growth over the coming years.

What to do?

I think it is time to take another look at the technological and
economic logic of the internet. What model of certification and
publishing is complementary to the advancement of cyberscience?
How can compatibility be ensured with the need of seamless
integration of research articles and data with the digital
workflow of scientists? What are the needs of authors, readers
and users in the internet galaxy if they have to handle steadily
increasing amounts of research publications and data? How to
better enable the utilisation of scientific knowledge in higher
education, industry and government?

I would be happy to hear from anyone interested in pursuing these
questions further.

Chris Armbruster