Re: Self-Archiving and Journal Subscriptions: Critique of PRC Study

[Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>]

On Thu, 10 May 2007, Ian Russell, Chief Executive, ALPSP, wrote:

> ...there is now a body of evidence* * for example ALPSP Survey 
> of Librarians on Factors in Journal Cancellation (Mark Ware, 
> 2006) and 'Self-archiving and subscriptions: Co-existence or 
> competition' (Chris Beckett and Simon Inger, 2006) to suggest 
> that if the final, peer-reviewed publisher version of the 
> article is available for free on institutional or subject 
> repositories subscriptions will decline and the journals will 
> go out of business.  This is an intuitive result: what 
> responsible librarian would spend precious money on something 
> that is freely available?

(1) If/when mandated Green OA self-archiving ever makes 
subscriptions unsustainable, journals will switch to Gold OA 
publishing (which is another desirable outcome, over and above 
100% Green OA, though not nearly as urgent):

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399we152.htm

(2) The PRC Study that Ian Russell cites is methodologically 
flawed, and does not show anything at all.

     "Self-Archiving and Journal Subscriptions: Critique of PRC Study"
     http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/162-guid.html

> You may not be bothered that journals go out of business. 
> Fair enough but then who administers and manages peer review, 
> and corrects the references, and does the reference linking, 
> and the other things that authors and readers expect and value?

Converting to Gold OA publishing is not going out of business, it 
is simply keeping up with technology, and with what is optimal 
for research productivity and progress.

Stevan Harnad