Re: SCOAP3

["\"FrederickFriend\"" <ucylfjf@ucl.ac.uk>]

I applaud the willingness of APS to support the SCOAP3 initiative 
if the right conditions are met. This new model could provide 
better value for the academic community and a successful new 
business model for academic publishers. Gene Sprouse is right to 
point to the risk that "some libraries might divert their now 
voluntary contributions from SCOAP3 to more pressing needs", but 
that risk is already there and is already damaging the income of 
some learned societies. Some libraries are diverting funds from 
individual journal subscriptions in order to maintain "big deals" 
with the major commercial publishers.

The risk from a SCOAP3 model is no greater and arguably less than 
under the present model. The strength in the SCOAP3 model to 
counter the risk comes from the international nature of the 
alliance between funding organizations and libraries, a strength 
which will be greater than that in the present model, in which 
financial support for journals comes primarily from the library 
sector and on a national rather than an international basis.

Fred Friend
JISC Scholarly Communication Consultant
Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gene Sprouse" <sprouse@ridge.aps.org>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2007 10:59 PM
Subject: SCOAP3

> SCOAP3 is an initiative to convert all of the major high energy 
> physics (HEP) journals to Open Access.  It would redirect 
> library funds for HEP journals to a consortium that would then 
> negotiate with publishers in order to reach the OA goals. 
> Although the SCOAP3 initiative sails under the banner of Open 
> Access, it brings in its wake the prospect of reducing the 
> aggregate cost to libraries of HEP journals. The costs of the 5 
> target journals are listed below:
>
> JOURNAL       $/article $/citation Publisher
> Phys. Rev. D         1.69 0.47         APS
> JHEP                 1.79 0.43        SISSA
> Phys. Lett. B        10.98 2.68         Elsevier
> Euro. Phys. Jour. C 18.71        7.06 Springer
> Nucl. Phys. B       32.33        6.20 Elsevier
>
> (Data from www.journalprices.com)
>
> To raise $3.7M, the US part of the $14M of consortium funding, 
> SCOAP3 is negotiating with US institutions involved in HEP 
> research. We estimate that only about 1/3 of the US 
> subscription revenue for Physical Review D comes from these 
> institutions, so if only they are involved, each must be asked 
> to triple what it now pays for PRD, presumably with offsetting 
> savings from other journals.  Of course SCOAP3 would also 
> benefit non-contributing institutions and the general public.
>
> APS has a mandate to publish in all physics disciplines. As a 
> service to the physics community we have kept our prices as low 
> as possible, to encourage broad distribution of our content. 
> However, if we are to continue to provide quality peer review, 
> distribution, and archiving of physics research, we must 
> recover our costs. The current subscription-based funding 
> model, though far from perfect, has provided adequate and 
> stable funding, in harmony with the arXiv and with our generous 
> self-archiving provisions.  An obvious concern is that once the 
> journals are freely available, some libraries might divert 
> their now voluntary contributions from SCOAP3 to other more 
> pressing needs, because doing so would bring no immediate 
> consequences. We are gravely concerned about the difficulty of 
> reassembling our subscription model were SCOAP3 to fail.
>
> The funding and sustainability of the SCOAP3 model have yet to 
> be developed and demonstrated. If they can be, then APS would 
> be willing to make PRD freely available on our site.
>
> Gene D. Sprouse
> Editor-in-Chief, American Physical Society
>
> Joseph W. Serene
> Treasurer and Publisher, American Physical Society