Re: Homer Simpson at the NIH

["Joseph Esposito" <espositoj@gmail.com>]

David:

In June I met with a small journals publisher who told me she had 
sold her journals operation precisely because of open access. 
She might have been wrong, but she believed her independence was 
threatened. She got out while she could.

When a journal goes OA, it releases money from a library budget 
which in turn is used to pay for higher-priced subscriptions.

There are many, many reasons for OA, but saving money is not 
among them.

Joe


On 8/23/07, David Prosser <david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> Joe
>
> If we take open access out of the picture for the moment, your 
> view of larger players taking an increasing proportion of a 
> non-expanding market is a frightening one for the smaller, 
> society publishers.  It matches with the view that I have taken 
> of the 'big squeeze' for the smaller players and suggests that 
> if nothing changes in the market then the diversity of 
> publishers (including not-for-profits and university presses) 
> that we all want to see maintained is at risk.
>
> Now let's reintroduce the idea of open access.  Unfortunately, 
> through what we might call a prism of misunderstanding, open 
> access has been seen as a great threat to the smaller 
> publishers. My suggestion is that handled well it could 
> actually provide a survival mechanism for them.  Society 
> publishers and university presses have a number of great 
> advantages that could help them thrive in a publication-charge 
> open access journal environment - they often have high-quality 
> journals with excellent author services and they have close 
> connections with their communities (a bonus when searching for 
> referees).
>
> I can't imagine that to date any society publisher has lost its 
> independence due to open access.  Some have lost their 
> independence due to an inability to compete in the big deal 
> environment.  As you suggest, the subscription market is not 
> going to get any easier for the small publishers.  That's why 
> it makes sense to take a good look at open access.
>
> David