Re: OA economics & libraries

[Sandy Thatcher <sandy.thatcher@alumni.princeton.edu>]

David, commercial publishers were much more quick than non-profit 
publishers to devise and implement sophisticated editorial 
managements systems for journals, to try out new business 
approaches like the "big deal," to experiment with and then 
implement DOI and Cross-Ref, etc. I can give you a long list of 
such examples, but these may suffice for the time being.

Sandy Thatcher


At 7:30 PM -0400 10/27/11, David Prosser wrote:

>I introduced the costs study as a data point.  It's interesting 
>and maybe tells us something in addition to list participants 
>stating their opinions.  Of course, when such studies reinforce 
>our prejudices we cite them; when they don't, we invent charming 
>analogies to show why they can't possibly be true.
>
>I introduced 'flexibility' in response to the comments in the 
>first paragraph of Sandy's post.  (I think I was quite clear 
>about that.)  Sandy spoke of publishers being 'quick on their 
>feet'.  'Flexible' isn't an exact synonym, but not far off. 
>And of course I wasn't suggesting that the only sign of 
>flexibility for a commercial publisher is to go down an OA 
>route.  All I was doing was responding to Sandy's contention 
>that large commercial publishers - who he suggested were fleet 
>of foot when adopting new models - are rushing to embrace gold 
>OA.  I think that the evidence is that they are doing it slowly, 
>if at all, and generally in such a way to try to replicate 
>current revenue levels rather the way than BMC or PLoS One did. 
>As Joe reminds us, this is classic Christensen territory.  I 
>would suggest that what we are witnessing at the moment better 
>reflects Christensen's view of the commercial world than 
>Sandy's.
>
>In a cheekily entitled blog post 
>(http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=686) Michael Eisen listed 
>the PLoS One clones launched in the past year.  I don't know if 
>the list is exhaustive, I don't spot any obvious omissions, but 
>the list is split pretty much half-and-half society/commercial 
>publishers, with only one from the very biggest of the 
>commercials.  Again, I don't see any evidence that in this case 
>commercial entities are any more 'quick on their feet' than the 
>non-profit sector.  But as Sandy speaks to many more commercial 
>publishers than I do perhaps he can provide the evidence.
>
>David