Re: Potential positive spiral in transition to open access

[Heather Morrison <heatherm@eln.bc.ca>]

Sandy Thatcher wrote:

The assumption underlying such scenarios is that savings from 
library subscriptions will be applied to supporting more open 
access publishing. That is just not the way universities work, as 
James O'Donnell and others have pointed out on this listserv, so 
any such schemes are doomed to failure unless they can find a way 
to make this shifting of funding work in the way they hope it 
will.

Comment:

Agreed.  We should not simply make assumptions about how savings 
from transitioning to open access will be spent.  We should 
carefully develop and implement plans.

The nice thing about this approach - finding a journal that is 
expensive, but could manage on volunteer labour and in-kind 
support - is that a supporting library could transition funding 
from the one, expensive, subscription, to full open access 
support.  It is all the other subscribing libraries that need to 
develop contingency plans for savings from this approach.  My 
recommendation for all libraries is to at least begin such 
contingency planning.

My original blogpost:  a potential positive cycle:  more access, 
more funds, is at: 
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2007/06/potential-positive-cycle- 
more-access.html

Any opinion expressed in this e-mail is that of the author alone, 
and does not reflect the opinion or policy of BC Electronic 
Library Network or Simon Fraser University Library.

Heather Morrison, MLIS
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com