RE: Self-Archiving and Journal Subscriptions: Critique of PRC Study

["Rick Anderson" <rickand@unr.edu>]

>> "journals will switch to Gold OA" is a breathtakingly breezy 
>> and naive statement... The reality, of course, is that some 
>> journals will go Gold and some will simply go out of business.
>
> And their titles will migrate to other Gold publishers.

Sorry, what I should have said more clearly is that the 
_publishers_ of those journals will go out of business.  Many of 
those publishers will be learned societies that currently depend 
on sales of journal subscriptions in order to do their work.

> No, Gold OA *now*, when the money to pay for it is still tied 
> up in subscriptions, would redirect money from needed research. 
> Gold OA after subscriptions are made unsustainable by mandated 
> Green OA would redirect money from the subscription 
> cancellation savings and leave research money where it is 
> needed.

I see no reason to believe that the money currently paid for 
subscriptions under a commercial model will be redirected to 
author fees under a Gold OA model.  Libraries will not set up a 
new line in their materials budgets for the underwriting of 
author fees -- it's much more likely that libraries will simply 
see their budgets cut, universities will redirect funding to 
other areas where it is sorely needed, and authors will write 
publication fees into their grant proposals.  But don't take my 
word for it; Wellcome, for one, fully expects to redirect 
research funding towards OA publication costs in a Gold 
environment:

http://www.biomedcentral.com/openaccess/archive/?page=features&issue=18

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Rick Anderson
Dir. of Resource Acquisition
University of Nevada, Reno Libraries
rickand@unr.edu