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RE: Certification and Dissemination

On Fri, 2 May 2008, Sandy Thatcher wrote:
I agree with almost everything you say here, Stevan, but I do wonder how many current publishers using a subscription model will convert to Gold OA service-providers, mainly because I don't think the fees for these services will ever get high enough to provide the profit margins to which commercial publishers have become accustomed--and some will probably decide to invest their capital elsewhere where it will get a better ROI. University presses may be more likely to do so because they will charge less and have more of a mission-oriented focus anyway, being units of universities dedicated to the same values.
You may well be right, Sandy, in which case those journal titles will migrate from commercial journals to university presses. That would be fine (as long as university presses don't try to specialize in publishing just their own research output, becoming house organs or vanity presses!).

Stevan Harnad

Sandy Thatcher
Penn State University Press


On Tue, 29 Apr 2008, Ian.Russell [Chief Executive, ALPSP] wrote:


As I said, if both repository dissemination and peer review are being paid
for by subscriptions, gold OA or some other method then I personally have
no problem.  I don't know how I could have been clearer on this.

A bit of mix-up there. Journals and their expenses (including the cost of
administering peer review) are being paid for by institutional
subscriptions today.

Institutional repositories pay their own IR and deposit expenses.

I certainly hope that Ian is not suggesting that the institutions and their
authors should pay journals *extra* today in order to self-archive their
own published output in their own IRs while all those journals' expenses
are being paid by institutional subscriptions, for that would sound very
much like double-dipping.


However, the Southampton University mandate (and by extension other
similar mandates) is unfunded because the University has made no clear
commitment to support the scholarly communication system by continuing to
subscribe to journals; or to make a clear and unambiguous commitment to
meet gold OA fees; or to come up with some other method of funding the
system.

(We were talking about subscription journals, so let's leave Gold OA
journals out of it for now; we'll get back to them in moment.)

Institutions are continuing to subscribe to journals, but this has nothing
to do with institutions self-archiving: They self-archive their own
refereed research output. Their subscriptions buy in the refereed research
output of other institutions.

If and when Green OA self-archiving should ever make subscriptions
unsustainable (as I have already pointed out several times), *then*
journals can downsize to become peer-review service-providers alone (and
institutions will have plenty of windfall subscription savings out of which
to pay the much-reduced Gold OA fees for their own article output).

But right now, while subscriptions are still sustaining journals, there is
no question of extracting additional fees from author-institutions
(double-dipping).


I think that you made the point about subscription revenue providing
compensation for peer review because you misread or misunderstood my first
paragraph.  If it is paid for by subscriptions as it has been for 350
years then, of course, no problem.  If you have an unfunded mandate like
Southampton University's where: 1) authors have to deposit a version of
the article after publishers have added value, but 2) the University has
not made a commitment to cover gold OA fees, and 3) the University expects
to make 'subscription savings' through cancellations then Southampton
becomes a free rider on the rest of the system and with enough free riders
the system will break down.

I wonder where the connection between Southampton University's
self-archiving mandate and Southampton University 'subscription savings'
came from? How can an author-institution cancel journals just because it is
making its own *article* output OA? The subscriptions don't buy in the
institution's own article output: The institution already has that! Its
subscriptions buy in the article output of other institutions.

But perhaps you are referring to what might eventually happened if all
universities follow the cue from Southampton (and the 41 other universities
[including Harvard] and research funders [including RCUK, ERC and NIH] that
have mandated OA self-archiving, as the EUA has recommended for its 791
universities)?

But I have already answered that: If and when universal Green OA should
ever make subscriptions unsustainable, then journals can downsize and
convert to the Gold OA cost-recovery model to cover the costs of
administering and certifying the outcome of peer-review with their titles
and track-records.

That's the natural remedy for free riding (not double-dipping).


This argument is really a side show though as we simply don't know how the
subscription journal / repository relationship will work although we have
both agreed in the past that it will most likely result in journals going
out of business.

I don't recall agreeing about that! I am certain journal titles will
continue to exist, along with their editorial boards, referees, authors,
and track-records. Some titles may migrate to Gold OA publishers if their
subscription-based publishers don't want to stay in business, but that's
not *journals* (or peer review) going out of business.


As regards the output of publicly funded research:  No, I am sorry you are
quite wrong.  If the output from the university was 'peer-reviewed journal
articles' then the system would never have needed publishers to organize
the peer review.  I believe I answered in my original post why this is not
'free'.

And I believe I answered how peer review is being paid for today.


Incidentally, 'certification' is one of a number of areas where publishers
add value and it really must be noted that certification is much more that
simply running a peer review *process*.

Much more? It seems to me that once the peer review is done and the article
is accepted, certification simply amounts to affixing the journal title
(and with it its track record for quality).


Anyway, it seems to me that the issue would easily be solved if
Southampton University makes a campus-wide commitment to meet gold OA
fees.  Why hasn't it?

Why should it? Most Southampton articles (like most articles everywhere)
are being published in subscription journals today, not in Gold OA
journals, and those subscriptions are being paid by the subscribing
institutions today (and Southampton is subscribing to whatever journals it
feels it needs and can afford today).

Stevan Harnad