Re: Misperceptions clarified

[Sandy Thatcher <sgt3@psu.edu>]

At some future point I will report back to this list about what 
that "bare minimum" of the cost for supporting open source 
journal software really is, when we at Penn State have put into 
more active use the DPubs software that we have been 
co-developing with Cornell under a Mellon grant. From what I 
already know now, I suspect "bare minimum" gives a false 
impression of what the costs really are likely to be. As often 
with projects housed in universities, there is a tendency to 
bury, and not strictly account for, many costs that would in a 
commercial setting be more strictly tracked and explicitly 
recognized as real costs.

Sandy Thatcher
Penn State Press

> The lack of familiarity that many academics have with open 
> source journal publishing software is unfortunate, as it now 
> often exceeds the capabilities of commercial offerings - and at 
> a unbeatable price.  It does, like any software, require some 
> support.  Even those costs can be kept to a bare minimum.
>
> Anthony Watkinson raised the question in a response to Heather 
> Morrison about whether Scholarly Exchange supported large 
> journals.  Many of our journals are recently started but rapidly 
> becoming both active and recognized.  The software on which they 
> run, the Public Knowledge Project's Open Journal Systems, has 
> received a sufficient workout, with by PKP's estimate over 800 
> journals using it, and is capable of handling the editorial 
> loads that journals of all but the top few percent have to 
> manage.
>
> Our efforts, directed (but not exclusively) to smaller journals 
> and smaller societies, with their limited resources, have 
> focused on assistance with startup (a free year's hosting and 
> management), guidance in the startup process, and development of 
> resources to continue publishing thereafter (at minimal cost). 
> Beyond that, we vigorously encourage our journals to arrange 
> long-term archiving arrangements with university or governmental 
> bodies, a task made easier by the OAI-compliant and 
> LOCKSS-compliant nature of OJS.
>
> It is no longer an embarrassment to work with systems that cost 
> a hundredth of what older systems cost.  Many consider it a 
> definite advantage, especially if free and open access is the 
> goal.
>
> Julian H. Fisher, MD
>
> Managing Director
> Scholarly Exchange, Inc., a 501 (c) 3 public charity