[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: apologies for a confusion

There is a lot of confusion about the cost of gold OA, confusion caused by many factors in addition to the display of diacritics! The confusion is perhaps inevitable at this stage in gold OA development, because of the difficulty in getting to the true cost and economic benefits from the present subscription system and the true cost and economic benefits from gold OA. On the cost of the present system, for example, to the cost of library subscriptions should be added the cost to libraries of administering the system and the cost to authors of colour charges and other extras which are included in a gold OA publication charge but paid separately under the subscription model. Publishers will no doubt say that the cost of gold OA publishing could be higher than estimated, and we shall have to see how the effect of competition between publishers on OA publication charges affects the long-term cost.

Costs are only part of the economic equation and as yet we are unable to measure accurately the economic benefits from OA in respect of higher research productivity, support for small businesses, and improved healthcare through barrier-free access to the latest research. The work of John Houghton and Paul Sheehan in Australia is helping us to understand these economic benefits from OA but we have much to learn. It is too early to be precise about the long-term cost-benefit comparison but the early indications are not at all discouraging for either green or gold OA developments.

Fred Friend
JISC Scholarly Communication Consultant
Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL
E-mail ucylfjf@ucl.ac.uk

----- Original Message -----
From: "Liblicense-L Listowner" <liblicen@pantheon.yale.edu>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, May 23, 2007 3:07 AM
Subject: apologies for a confusion

Subscribers, please accept my apologies for a mistake that was made by at
least one reader looking at Atanu Garai's message of Tuesday evening.  In
it, Garai said:
"Researchers in the UK, for example, produce about 75,000 papers a year, which means they would have to pay about =A3100m in author fees if all journals were open access. This sum is far higher than the =A390m they currently pay in library subscriptions. (The open-access debate.
I have left in the ugly marks, because they gave rise to the error. Garai said that 75K papers would require authors to pay about 100M in UK pounds, more than the 90M in UK pounds they currently pay in library subscriptions. The "=A3" character represents the British pound sign. The listserving software of this world (we use listproc) has lagged behind the power of mailers, and so whenever readers send mail with various diacritical marks, "smart quotes", and the like, we risk getting those =20 signs and other gibberish. The moderator tries to clean them out, and then cleans them out again when they make it the archive, but usually they do not obstruct understanding; in this case I'm sorry to say they did.

The Moderator