SCOAP3, accreditation, and access to research laboratories

[Heather Morrison <heatherm@eln.bc.ca>]

Gene Sprouse of the American Physical Society expresses the 
concerns of APS about ongoing sustainability of their publishing 
program with a shift from subscriptions to open access 
publishing, in his message: 
http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/ListArchives/0712/msg00014.html.

SCOAP3 is a consortium within physics exploring the idea of 
shifting physics publishing to a fully open access model.

The fear is that if payment is voluntary, libraries may choose to 
drop out of the consortium.  This is a reasonable concern. 
Thanks for Gene for raising it.

Here is a thought:  some of the members of SCOAP3 have access to 
facilities which are necessary for researchers in high energy 
physics, such as CERN, the world's largest particle physics 
laboratory.

Could members with such facilities have rules about participation 
in SCOAP3 for institutions whose scientists would like to be 
visiting researchers?  It should be possible to formulate rules 
that are flexible to meet the needs of wealthy and less-wealthy 
institutions, those with many physicists, and those with few. 
If participation in SCOAP3 were a requirement to participate in 
the research, drop-outs should be highly unlikely.

Because research in this area is expensive, a price structure 
based on research intensity would be fair.

Another approach to fairness for different countries would be to 
translate pricing into average wage equivalents.  For example, if 
a reasonable price for a high-intensity research institution in a 
western country equates with an average month's salary for a 
researcher, then have a price structure that charges the 
equivalent of an average month's wages in local currency.  This 
way, wealthy and poor institutions could be equal contributors, 
even if the revenue received were not equal.

Physics may be unique in having key central facilities such as 
CERN.

However, something that all worthwhile academic institutions do 
need is accreditation.  In order to be accredited, an academic 
institution needs to have, among many other things, a library 
which meets particular standards.

Perhaps, in the future, one of these standards for libraries will 
be participating in dissemination of scholarly information.

Larger or research-intensive universities may prefer to have 
their own OA publishing programs and/or open access archives. 
Smaller schools, or those without research programs, could 
contribute to a central fund.  This central fund could then be 
used to subsidize projects such as SCOAP3, or other existing or 
potential open access projects, from subsidizing OA journals to 
subsidizing university presses so that they could provide full 
open access.  Like having a library, such contributions could be 
considered essential for accreditation rather than optional.

With this approach, smaller and less research-intensive 
institutions would have an opportunity to participate in paying 
for scholarly publishing, much as they do now with subscriptions, 
as well as clear guidelines on what is expected.

There are many models within universities, libraries and library 
consortia, and governments that could be considered for managing 
such central funds.  There need not be a single fund; there could 
be many.

The output of such a fund would be the open access materials 
themselves; this is an approach that lends itself very well to a 
transparent accountability.

Any opinion expressed in this e-mail is that of the author alone, 
and does not reflect the opinion or policy of BC Electronic 
Library Network or Simon Fraser University Library.

Heather Morrison, MLIS
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com