Re: The Value of OA (resend)

[David Goodman <dgoodman@princeton.edu>]

I said "a matter of redistributing the money" not "merely a 
matter of redistributing the money" Redesigning business 
operations is not trivial, especially if some of the parties are 
doing it under compulsion of regulators or fear of bankruptcy.

David Goodman, Ph.D., M.L.S.
dgoodman@princeton.edu


----- Original Message -----
From: Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>
Date: Sunday, April 15, 2007 4:10 pm
Subject: Re: The Value of OA (resend)
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu

> If it is truly "a matter of redistributing the money," then we 
> in fact would have enormous savings, as this would permit us to 
> eliminate the economics profession entirely.  We would not need 
> speculation (and faculty appointments and research publications 
> and books and conferences) to study why a shift in an economic 
> model changes people's behavior.  Cost is a constant, right? 
> People don't do things differently, based on their incentives, 
> correct?  Scholarly communications is a closed system, locked 
> up tightly like a "clean room" project in a laboratory, and not 
> subject to any outside influences such as (to choose some of 
> the more trivial examples) human inventiveness, changes in 
> demography, developments in the fields studied themselves, or 
> the atavistic tendency of some people to search for a good seat 
> when they enter a theater.
>
> Heaving the irony to the side, we really have to get beyond the 
> notion that we can change one thing and everything else will 
> remain the same; it is not a matter of choosing the red jelly 
> beans over the yellow jelly beans (itself an act that may have 
> large, unforeseeable consequences) but of whether there will 
> jelly beans at all. Oh, there will be some sweetmeats in their 
> place, but we really don't know what they will look like, and 
> to say that we do implies a dangerous lack of humility.
>
> Joe Esposito
>
>
> On 4/13/07, David Goodman <dgoodman@princeton.edu> wrote:
>> We can have it as either cheaper or more expensive depending upon
>> the quality we want. If we accept arXiv only publication, with
>> after-the-fact peer review, it can be very cheap indeed; If we
>> aim for the same price as the present system, we should get the
>> same quality. There is no inherent reason why it should cost more
>> one way than the other. It is not a question of costs; it will
>> only be a question of costs if you insist on keeping the present
>> system as a base and adding additional complications.
>>
>> this is what the present publishers want to do. They want to do
>> everything as expensively as they now do it, and then add on
>> costs.  There is no reason why anyone else should pay the least
>> attention. The money can be fixed, and the bidding be for who can
>> produce the best product for the price while making it
>> universally available. Elsevier will figure out how to publish at
>> competitive prices.
>>
>> It is a matter of redistributing the money,and concern about this
>> is also unnecessary. The academic system just like the publishers
>> wants to do everything as it now does, and then consider the
>> additional costs to do more. Frankly, there is no reason to pay
>> the least attention here either. If he money available is frozen,
>> and the minimum requirement is that all publications be
>> universally available in some form, they will do it a best they
>> can, and the best schools will compete for who can do it best,
>> just as they do with everything else in the academic world. And
>> Yale will figure out how to pay to maintain its quality.
>>
>> David Goodman, Ph.D., M.L.S.
>> dgoodman@princeton.edu