paying for OA Journal articles

[David Goodman <dgoodman@Princeton.EDU>]

Money will be needed to pay the publishing fees for OA articles, 
either in OA Journals or in "Open Choice," i.e., 
OA-by-the-article-journals. Two major sources have been 
suggested:  library subscription fees, and the research grants.

If grant sources pay most of this, the library would be able to 
buy some of the many important non OA items in all subject 
fields--items which they have not been able afford because of the 
cumulative price increases in these very same journals--many even 
from the same publisher.

Indeed,publishers would be very well situated; to give a specific 
example, a library that saved money on Elsevier journals might be 
very likely to use some of it for Scopus.

I do not think that any administration would let a library keep 
all of this windfall--I think most libraries would be fortunate 
to keep even half. But there's a clear advantage in 
open-access-by-the-article: the windfall any one year would not 
be dramatic. If the total decrease in a subscription budget were 
10 or 20% a year, the library would be much more likely to keep 
it than if it were 90% in any one year.

David Goodman, Ph.D.

Bibliographer and Research Librarian
Princeton University Library
(Retired)
dgoodman@princeton.edu

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Date: Wednesday, September 6, 2006 9:59 pm
Subject: Nature Publishing Group letter to customers, 2006
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