Funding OA (Long-Term)

[Ann Okerson <ann.okerson@yale.edu>]

To add to Peter Suber's prognoses for OA for 2007:  I predict 
that requests to (large? all?) libraries for significant funds to 
sustain quality OA projects or journals that were begun as 
startups will grow (and grow). The startup funding will end or 
the home institution will be unable to continue to cover the 
entire costs of publication.  This is not going to be true for 
*all* OA publications, but it will be true for many.

In January, we received 3 such requests within one week, none of 
them at the (relatively low) level of regular journal 
subscriptions.  The plan was that by asking a relatively small 
number of large institutions, these publishers would simplify 
billing and the resources would (continue to be) available for 
free worldwide. In our institution we can and will assess such 
requests on a one-by-one basis and might be able to support some.

This next phase of OA projects (let's call it long-term financial 
viability or sustainability) is complicated and vexing:  (1) all 
now appreciate better the extent of the running costs of a 
resource that we would like to be freely available to all; and 
(2) we can think of almost nowhere else to go for those 
continuing costs except to libraries, who get their money from 
users.  The difference now is that instead of going to many many 
libraries, requesters are focusing on a few.

To one of the inquirers, a very good e-journal, we responded by 
asking whether it would be possible to charge a subscription fee, 
thus spreading out the costs among this fine title's many 
readers.  But we heard that spreading out costs among many 
readers is costly for the publisher. Instead, perhaps everyone 
could agree to pay author charges of $1500 per article?  As this 
is a journal in the information-library arena, such a charge 
represents an unfunded expense at an order of magnitude price 
higher than for other journals in our field and is unrealistic.

I would welcome hearing from libraries about how they might be 
handling this new set of requests and wherein realistic long-term 
solutions could lie.  I'm pretty sure it's not in asking 
libraries with bigger budgets for more and more financial 
support.

Ann Okerson/Yale Library