Interview with Vitek Tracz re-published and updated

["Richard Poynder" <richard.poynder@gmail.com>]

The interview I published on Open & Shut? in 2006 with BioMed 
Central founder Vitek Tracz has been re-published in the journal 
Logos.

Since the OA environment has changed somewhat since 2006 - not 
least as a result of the sale of BMC to Springer in 2008 - the 
interview includes an update. In that update I sketch out how I 
believe the OA movement has developed, and add some further 
commentary from Tracz.

Below are a few quotes from Tracz taken from the update.

     * On his motivation to embrace OA:

"I took horrendous risks, and I was not at all sure that it would 
ever make financial sense. It was an ethical issue, and I was 
intrigued by the complexities of it."

     * On whether OA publishing will prove more or less expensive
       than subscription publishing:

"I always assumed that OA publishing would be cheaper, but OA 
publishing is more complicated than we had initially envisaged. 
The logistics of it all quickly becomes very complicated, so it 
turns out not to be much cheaper than traditional publishing. 
This in turn means that the mount of money publishers can make is 
similar."

     * On the argument that publishers charge too much for their
       services, and the research community might at some point no
       longer be able to afford to pay the bill:

"I have never participated in the economic argument. I haven't 
got the faintest idea how that works, who says it is too much, on 
what basis they say it, or where it will all end. But it doesn't 
matter that I don't know."

     * On why it does not matter that he does not know:

"It's no different to when you walk into a market to buy a 
picture: If the buyer is not prepared to pay the asking price 
then the seller has to reduce the price. The price will always 
find its natural level. It's as simple as that. So in the end it 
will depend on what the whole system is prepared to pay."

     * On the future of scholarly publishing:

"What will be needed is not clear to me. But what is clear is 
that unrestricted access to primary research in the life sciences 
is essential. It's got to the point where research can't work 
without it. That means we will never return to a day in which 
access is restricted."

More here:

http://poynder.blogspot.com/2011/01/vitek-tracz-interview-re-published-with.html