Re: Homer Simpson at the NIH

["Joseph J. Esposito" <espositoj@gmail.com>]

Chuck,

There is evidence that free access leads to cancellations of 
subscriptions, but the publishers who experience these 
cancellations are understandably reluctant to discuss them, as it 
could lead to a cascade of cancellations. Try this for an 
announcement:  "Since we made part of our material open access, 
we have seen our subscriptions drop.  Here is a list of 
institutions that no longer subscribe.  Why doesn't your library 
join the bandwagon?"

Cancellations take place at the margin, not the center.  No one 
is going to cancel Science or Nature.  What's at risk are second- 
and primarily third-tier publications, and they only become at 
risk when a library approaches the limit of its budget.  Since a 
library will always want to purchase more than it can afford to, 
the question becomes which publications to take, which to reject. 
The first-tier publications get in easily, but journals outside 
the elite circle may not be so lucky.  If a librarian sees that a 
third-tier journal is wholly available in open access 12 months 
after publication, that journal may get cancelled in favor of a 
journal of comparable quality that has no open access policy. 
It is immaterial whether that policy is mandated by the NIH or 
any other body.  OA, in other words, is but one of many things 
that could tip matters in the direction of cancellation for 
certain publications.  Other tipping factors may include the 
availability of a journal through an online aggregator such as 
ProQuest.

Of course, someone may say, Who cares if OA is only having a 
negative impact on third-tier journals?  Good point, but this 
undermines the entire rationale for OA, which is to make MORE 
material available.  Since libraries buy the good stuff first, OA 
can only mean making more materials of inferior quality 
available.  I won't engage the question of what makes a journal 
first-tier, second-tier, whatever.  Librarians know, and they 
make well-informed discriminations.

A couple-three years ago I made a presentation on this topic at a 
HighWire client conference.  To judge by the number of requests I 
got afterward for copies of the slides, I think the presentation 
struck a chord with the distinguished society publishers in 
attendance.  They know what is happening to them.  Many of them 
are fortunate that their publications are comfortably in the 
first tier and thus secure.

Another aspect of OA after an embargo is that it makes it hard to 
introduce new products unless you can put them into a Big Deal. 
New journals start at the margin, right where librarians are 
studying their expenditures very carefully.  Thus OA militates 
against editorial innovation, even as it favors the largest, most 
successful publishers.

The problem with OA is simply that it is good intentions but bad 
economics. Of all the forms of OA, the very worst is what the NIH 
is proposing, the catch-and-release variety, as it conceals the 
pernicious aspect of not requiring that people allocate 
resources--time, energy, money--in consumption.

Joe Esposito

----- Original Message -----
From: "Hamaker, Charles" <cahamake@uncc.edu>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Saturday, August 04, 2007 8:34 AM
Subject: RE: Homer Simpson at the NIH


> But there still isn't any evidence that free access to 
> published articles outside the journal impacts journal 
> subscription base. In my experience with researchers, for 
> citation purposes they must have access to the original 
> article. Would citation of the NIH copy be sufficient for 
> documentation purposes in an article? Would norms of citation 
> change that much? I can't believe it would be sufficient for 
> that purpose. If it can't be substituted for the actual journal 
> article, where's the competition with the original. Or am I 
> misunderstanding something fundamental about the proposal? The 
> notification use of the article gets enhanced, the citation 
> stays with the original-no? Or are publishers arguing that for 
> citation purposes the NIH copy will be sufficient?
>
> Chuck Hamaker
> Associate University Librarian Collections and Technical Services
> Atkins Library
> University of North Carolina Charlotte
> Charlotte, NC 28223