Subscription to Open Access Transition

[Heather Morrison <heatherm@eln.bc.ca>]

greetings Ahmed,

Many thanks for your comments on Liblicense about Subscription to 
Open Access transition, at 
http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/ListArchives/0607/msg00185.html.

Hindawi certainly has expertise in making OA business models 
succeed, and it is very good to see your paricipation in this 
discussion!

The experience with physics illustrates that open access does not 
equate with cancellations; even with 100% open access in arXiv 
with some areas of physics, there is no evidence that this has 
caused any cancellations.

This is because, with academic publishing, the producers and 
consumers are largely the same, which is what, to me, gives hope 
of a smooth transition. Libraries do not look at academic 
journals strictly as a purchaser, as per your example; rather, 
they work in cooperation with faculty to decide what to subscribe 
to and what to keep rather than cancel.  Faculty know which 
journals are important in their field, and will not recommend 
cancellations due to open access.

Funding for open access can - and, ideally, should, come from a 
variety of sources.  One source is the university's own funds; 
this is one pot of money, which is divided up into different ways 
(library subscription budget, department funds).

To see the potential for a smooth transition to open access, I 
think it is helpful to look beyond the differences, and see the 
one pot of money that can easily be transformed from purchase to 
production-based payment.  This is easiest with one central 
purchasing department, and to me, it makes sense that this would 
be the library.

The subscription / open choice hybrid is just one approach to 
this transition, which might work better for some publishers than 
others - particularly traditional publishers who might be finding 
a straightfoward OA transition difficult.

It makes sense to me that libraries should also coordinate 
payments to more straightforward OA publishers. This will mean 
invoicing efficiencies for universities, libraries, and 
publishers.  This, too, can be a hybrid system, which may be less 
visible for the publisher - that is, funds might come from 
funding agencies, departments, or the library budget, or some 
combination - the publisher need not know the details.

For the OA publisher, in addition to invoicing efficiencies, this 
can be a helpful marketing tool; once the invoicing arrangement 
is set up, libraries can help to provide information to faculty 
about how to go about publishing OA with the libraries' partners.

If any library would like to pursue this, one option at present 
is to consider this on a publisher-by-publisher and/or 
journal-by-journal basis. For example, if a publisher or journal 
has a reputation for excellent quality at reasonable prices, then 
the library might pre-approve payment of 100% of the fee.  Of, if 
the library does not see 100% as affordable, the library could 
coordinate payment and pay a percentage if the department pays 
the rest; it might be wise to cap the fee the library will pay, 
to encourage efficiency in the system, and make sure that faculty 
members look carefully at the higher fees.

There are other hybrid arrangements already in place that 
publishers are participating in, like PLoS or BMC, which offer a 
membership arrangement for libraries that automatically means a 
lower fee for their faculty on submission.

thoughts?

Heather G. Morrison
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com