Re: Institutional Mandates and Institutional OA Repository Growth

[Sandy Thatcher <sgt3@psu.edu>]

>The factual part is fact. If wise men have privileged access to the
>future, so be it. I have none. I have only the available evidence,
>and logic. (And logic tells me that where there's a will, there's a
>way, especially if/when the hypothetical cancellation windfall
>savings that no one has yet seen should ever materialize. Till
>then, I'll just go with the evidence-based four -- self-archiving,
>self-archiving mandates, OA, and their already demonstrated
>feasibility and benefits -- leaving the speculation to those who
>prefer that sort of thing.)

One would hope, Stevan, that "logic" would apply, of all places,
within academic institutions. But I have been writing now for two
decades providing "evidence" of ways in which higher education does
not act according to logic, or norms of rationality, that one would
expect from it. For a recent example, see my article in the April
issue of Against the Grain about the illogic of the way revised
dissertations, and the fates of junior faculty tied to them, are
handled in the academy now. Another example is the promotion of
aggressive application of "fair use" within academia, which has the
by-product of undercutting the economic base of university press
publishing. This kind of "evidence" of pervaise irrationality in the
system of scholarly communication of which there is an abundance
makes me skeptical of any "logic" that foresees a redirecting of
savings from journal cancellations to funding of Gold OA journals.

>If PRISM is making any new points -- empirical or logical -- I
>would be very grateful if you point out to me exactly what those
>new points are. For all I have seen has been a repetition of the
>very few and very familiar old points I and others have rebutted
>many, many times before.

I'm not saying the points or arguments per se are all that new
(although a decade ago no one in publishing was talking about OA as
any kind of threat, even they even knew what OA was), but that the
rhetoric and the level of lobbying activity on this issue betoken a
new level of concern among STM publishers, which leads me to
speculate--yes, speculate--that we may be getting closer to a
"tipping point" in the industry. As I have emphasized before, it is
not a matter of whether the STM business could be run profitably with
NIH-type restrictions in place, but instead the expectations the
companies most invested in this business have about profit margins
and their willingness to continue in the business at ba lower level
of profit when their funds might be redirected to more profitable
uses elsewhere. Money tends to go where the expectations for profits
are greatest. It is perception, rather than any "reality," that is
important here and that will ultimately determine whether a "tipping
point" occurs--just as it was the perception of the consequences of
black movement into urban areas that led to "white flight" that was
the first application of the notion of the "tipping point." It wasn't
any reality of the consequences, but the expectation among white
owners that certain consequences would ensue from an increase in
black population that led to the "tipping point" in this instance.
Since the commercial companies do not have a "mission" to serve
scholarship (unlike societies and university presses), they have no
reason to stay in the business if it can't continue to meet their
economic expectations.

-- 
Sanford G. Thatcher, Director
Penn State University Press
USB1, Suite C
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University Park, PA 16802-1003
e-mail: sgt3@psu.edu
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