RE: NIH Public Access Mandate Passes Senate

[<Toby.GREEN@oecd.org>]

Thomas,

You don't understand how IGOs can contract out and lose money at 
the same time? This is because they don't contract out everything 
they publish. This is because not everything they publish is 
attractive to commercial publishers.

Repec, of course, is not a funding agency. My point was that 
funding agencies, if they choose to take over responsibility for 
copyright for the work they fund, may end up facing challenges 
similar to those seen today in IGOs. This may, indeed, include 
"bureaucratic" layers (in my experience all large organisations 
end up with administrative layers), so perhaps this is one of 
many lessons they need to consider before they go down this road. 
I have to say, however, that as far as IGO publishing operations 
are concerned, we're as lean as any other not-for-profit 
publisher I've come across. Why not come and visit us during your 
sabbatical year to find out? Besides, I'd love to learn more 
about computers and the Internet.

Your last point shows that you've never read an article published 
in The Grey Journal about OECD's working papers and Repec (1). 
The essence of the article was this: OECD's authors used to be 
responsible for posting their working papers on Repec. The result 
was that just one out of our many working paper series was posted 
satisfactorily. Another had a proportion of the papers posted, 
but invariably the links pointed to our internal intranet thereby 
denying access to Repec users. The other series had not one paper 
posted between them. This suggest that if you leave dissemination 
to busy authors and their administrative support staff to be done 
as 'part of their time' (as you recommend), it might be done 
pretty poorly. The article reports just one case, but I wonder 
what would be found if similar studies were done in other 
institutions?

We now have one (very) competent person in the OECD Publishing 
division, loading our (now) seventeen working paper series into a 
database which feeds not just Repec, but also our own iLibrary, 
SourceOECD (and we have plans to feed more sites too). She does 
this as part of her working day - I estimate managing working 
papers takes around 40 hours of her time per year (~ a week's 
work) - but this is not to say it is done without cost. She is 
paid for this week's work as for all the other weeks she puts in 
for us.

Toby Green

(1) Green, Toby. A whiter shade of grey: a case study on how OECD cleared up
the mess that was its working papers. The Grey Journal, 2006, Vol 2, Issue 2
p91.


-----Original Message-----
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Thomas Krichel
Sent: 02 November, 2007 12:24 AM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: NIH Public Access Mandate Passes Senate

Toby.GREEN@oecd.org writes

> It is also true that most IGOs have contracted out the 
> publishing of their research journals to specialist journal 
> publishers (often commercial) because they couldn't provide the 
> investment and support needed to develop the journals. In some 
> cases, reports are also contracted out to book publishers for 
> the same reasons. The pressure to outsource is currently 
> growing in IGOs.
>
> Virtually all IGOs run their publishing operations at a loss 
> and funding for these losses is getting harder and harder to 
> find as member governments squeeze budgets. In some cases the 
> posting of reports online for free has badly eroded the revenue 
> streams from selling publications, causing financial problems. 
> As with many university presses, it is often the publishing 
> operation that gets hit when the squeeze is on as this activity 
> is not considered 'core'.

I don't understand this.

The IGOs contract out the publishing operation to a publisher. 
The publisher sells the output, earns money from that, and then 
the IGO also pays the publisher again, to compensate them from 
having "suffered" profits from the sale of the publication? Or 
where else does the loss come from?

> Larger IGOs like World Bank, OECD and the main parts of the UN 
> have in-house publishing operations that work with the authors 
> to improve their original manuscripts and promote the resultant 
> reports. The financial squeeze means there is less support for 
> authors and fewer resources for promotion efforts. (Promotion 
> might not seem important, but what is the point of putting out 
> a report if no-one reads it?) It is also noticeable that small 
> IGOs are struggling to get their reports 'out there' because 
> they don't have the in-house resources and skills to publish 
> their work properly.

You have to fire the multiply layers of bureaucrats who don't 
know anything about computers and the Internet. That IGOs are 
wasteful is not a problem of the publishing system.

> Two things here: firstly, IGOs have employed publishing staff 
> to support authors - will funding agencies end up doing the 
> same?

You need only one competent person, she can do this as part of 
her time. Many of the 800+ RePEc archives are staffed by simple 
administrators. No need to fund this.

Cheers,

Thomas Krichel                    http://openlib.org/home/krichel
                                RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
mostly offline 2007-11-01 to 20007-11-18     skype: thomaskrichel