Re: Stop fighting the inevitable - and free funds for open access!

[Sandy Thatcher <sgt3@psu.edu>]

As a publisher (of journals as well as books) and as co-director 
of the Office of Digital Scholarly Publishing at Penn State, 
where we are developing with the support of a Mellon grant 
jointly with Cornell an open-source journal publishing platform 
known as DPubs, I find this a peculiar calculation of the cost of 
operating a journal. Surely, Heather Morrison knows better than 
to suggest that it only costs $509 to run a journal even using a 
"free" open-source system like OJS.  Then what is the purpose of 
making such a claim, other than providing more propaganda for OA, 
denigrating further the Elseviers of the world, and trying to 
fool some people who may not know better? If we are going to 
engage in rational discussion of the pros and cons of OA, we need 
to get beyond simplistic analyses like this.

Sandy Thatcher
Penn State Press

--
Sanford G. Thatcher, Director
Penn State University Press
University Park, PA 16802-1003
e-mail: sgt3@psu.edu
http://www.psupress.org


> There are some in the publishing community who are
> spendingsignificant sums fighting open access - for example,
> Naturerecently reported that AAP spent $300,000 - $500,000 in 2006,
> asreported in their article, PR's "pitbull" takes on open access
> -January 25, 2007.
>
> Funds that are currently being spent fighting open access arefunds
> that are not really needed for publishing per se, and so itis
> reasonable to ask, what might be accomplished if funds
> wereredirected from fighting open access, to implementing OA?
>
> This one expenditure by AAP is sufficient for hosting and
> supportservices for 785 open access journals using Open Journal
> Systems[disclosure:  I work for SFU Library, one of the partners in
> thePKP project which produces OJS].  Note:  OJS is free, open
> sourcesoftware; this estimate reflects the fee for cost-recovery
> forhosting and support.
>
> If Elsevier's annual U.S. lobbying budget were redirected to
> OApublishing - this would be enough for support and hosting forover
> 3,000 journals - much more than the 2,000 Elsevier
> currentlyproduces.  There is more to publishing than hosting and
> support,of course; but then, the U.S. is not the only country for
> whichElsevier has a lobbying budget.
>
> For details and calculations, see my blogpost, "Stop fighting
> theinevitable - and free funds for open access!
> at:http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2007/01/stop-fighting-inevitable-and-free.html
>
> Heather G. Morrison
> heatherm@eln.bc.ca