[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Funding OA (Long-Term)

Mr. Krichel: Could you kindly explain further your message below, i.e.,
how it is responsive to the inquiry about long-term open access funding
for high quality, peer reviewed journals? My point was that libraries
(particularly the larger ones) are more and more being asked to contribute
significant sums of money for ongoing support, once OA projects have
passed startup funding, and that doesn't seem to me a secure source of
revenue. To wit, since access is free, the incentives to keep paying are
not high and the financial underpinnings thus become vulnerable.

You replied that publishers need to change their journals platforms to less costly ones and get free Web hosting somewhere. Many small (and larger) publishers have already done exactly that. And, while reasonable, suggestion provides much help for the publishers of quality titles, as the rest of their non-trivial costs remain to be covered.

(Maybe we should look to our arctic-American friends for cheap labor, but they seem pretty occupied where they are... see last week's New Yorker cartoon, on the table of contents page. Sorry I'm contributing to the bizarre metaphors: pit bulls, Barbie dolls, and now penguins!)

Ann Okerson/Yale Library

On Tue, 6 Feb 2007, Thomas Krichel wrote:

  Ann Okerson writes


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.

Yes. The journal could probably do with shedding expenses. Running an
academic journal should not be that expensive. It should be much less
expensive than, say, running an academic web site since the journal has
fewer pages, all writing is done outside and the pages just cumulate and
don't need updating. What is required is just one tech-savvy academic,
she can run it in her service time.

When will the time come that Columbia will beg Yale to contribute
to maintain Columbia's web site? When did we ever discuss how the
web is funded?

Cheers,

Thomas Krichel
mailto:krichel@openlib.org
http://openlib.org/home/krichel
RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
skype id: thomaskrichel