Re: Institutional Journal Costs in an Open Access Environment

[JOHANNES VELTEROP <velteropvonleyden@btinternet.com>]

Phil,

I'm sorry if rhetoric clouds the issue for you. The arguments 
that I'm making are these:

1. The money in the 'system' spent on scholarly literature could 
be spent on the service of publishing and have open access as a 
beneficial effect, instead of being spent on the purchase of 
content and have access controls as a detrimental effect.

2. Publishing the results is part of research (without publishing 
the research could just as well not have been done) and therefore 
the cost of publishing is best seen as part of the cost of doing 
research.

3. It is best left to authors to have some discretionary 
lattitude as to how to use their grants, as it is with regard to 
how they choose to write their papers and where they choose to 
submit them for publication.

4. The money that would give authors this lattitude could 
conceivably come out of lowering the percentage of overheads 
charged by the institution, eventually traded off against (part 
of) the library acquisitions budget.

The argument that I'm *not* making is advocating any of the three 
scenarios you sketch. I agree with you that they are likely to be 
unworkable from a bureaucratic and political point of view.

Jan

--- Phil Davis <pmd8@cornell.edu> wrote:

> Jan,
>
> Your analogy makes great rhetoric, but it does not make for 
> good argument.  I did not argue that the current model of 
> funding publishing should remain simply because it has always 
> been that way (in the same sense that it was heresy to question 
> the belief that the sun revolved around the earth).  The 
> current system may have its inefficiencies, but your 
> alternative model (simply charging author fees to the 
> institution -- be it the library or a Provost's fund), is 
> wrought with political land mines and may challenge the 
> academic freedom of authors.
>
> In my scenarios, I have attempted to illustrate the following 
> points:
>
> 1) That an unmanaged author-expense fund is open to abuse from 
> individuals and exploitation from publishers
>
> 2) A managed author fund would be politically more sensitive 
> than librarian-as-manager of subscriptions.  It may also 
> challenge academic freedom of authors
>
> 3) A managed author fund (as a limited resource) may be no more 
> economically efficient than librarian-as-manager of 
> subscriptions
>
> Now if you can come up with a solution that benefits science, 
> academics, AND makes finances easier to manage, I'm all ears...
>
> P.S.  I got a paper accepted to a Springer journal, but I have 
> no grant funds.  Could you waiver my $3,000 fee so I can make 
> my article Open Access?
>
> --Phil