Re: Funding OA (Long-Term)

[Sandy Thatcher <sgt3@psu.edu>]

It strikes me that a similar dynamic may work in the OA area that 
occurred in scholarly book publishing, with a handful of 
universities (now around 85 in the U.S.) picking up the burden of 
supporting presses that do the publishing for the whole system. 
The payback from universities without presses occurred almost 
solely through their library purchases (with an occasional title 
subsidy thrown in), while the 85 universities shouldered the 
major expense for running the system as a whole.

I have never thought that was a very fair arrangement (nor did 
those who wrote the ACLS-supported Report of the Scholarly 
Enquiry into Scholarly Communication, published by Johns Hopkins 
Press back in 1979, and recommended that all universities 
benefiting from the system pay to help support it through 
subsidies of various kinds). Perhaps author fees for OA articles 
may distribute the burden more equitably, but from what I hear 
Ann Okerson saying, there are some people at the larger 
universities that fear it won't end up being a much different 
result in the end.

Sandy Thatcher
Penn State Press