Re: Open Access: a role for the Aggregators

[Mark Kurtz <mkurtz@arl.org>]

This is a very interesting suggestion, and one that dovetails 
with our thinking at BioOne. Our OA collection currently has 8 
titles (with the addition in 2008 of 5 titles from Conservation 
International), and we are exploring ways to grow it on a 
sustainable basis. At present, we ask OA titles to either submit 
their content in NLM XML or pay for their conversion and online 
loading/QC expenses, which are not insignificant. Some OA titles 
can cover that via author fees, but for most titles in 
organismal, environmental, and integrative biology, author 
charges are not an option--and this is a significant limiting 
factor. And of course, the costs of building and maintaining a 
sophisticated hosting platform extend well beyond conversion and 
loading charges. So we do not yet have a sustainable model for 
OA.

Recently we've been exploring the possibility of asking libraries 
to contribute to the financial sustainability of our OA 
collection, whether as a small percentage of their licensing fee 
to the subscribed collection(s) (allowing libraries to contribute 
on a proportional basis), or on a per-journal charge of the sort 
you suggest. We have discussed an opt-in model, whereby 
subscribing libraries could agree to be invoiced for the 
additional amount by checking a box on the subscriber license.

The problem is, as ever, that of free ridership. Would the 
benefit to library subscribers you identify--"more content 
accessible through one familiar, well-developed tool with lots of 
support..." be a sufficient incentive to escape the conundrum of 
free ridership and establish a new economic settlement (as we at 
BioOne think of it) for scholarly publishing?

We would genuinely appreciate feedback from the members of this 
list.

Mark Kurtz  |  Director of Business Development  |  BioOne
21 Dupont Circle Suite 800  |  Washington, DC  20036
Phone 202.296.2296  |  Fax 202.872.0884  |  Cell 617.669.4276
mkurtz@arl.org
www.BioOne.org


On Mar 19, 2008, at 9:05 PM, Heather Morrison wrote:

> Vendors of aggregated databases and similar services to libraries
> have potentially very important roles to play in the transition
> to open access.
>
> These roles range from increasing visibility of open access
> journals through providing abstracting and indexing, to
> supporting OA services such as the Directory of Open Access
> Journals, to contributing to the economics of open access and
> including the full text content of OA journals in the aggregated
> databases.
>
> This could be a win-win-win situation.  OA journals benefit from
> enhanced impact and support; vendors can provide expanded
> services at little or no additional cost; and libraries can enjoy
> more fulltext content in the well-developed searching services we
> currently enjoy.
>
> By my calculations, libraries could fund an immense amount of
> open access journals, at costs of an average of $1 - $10 per
> title.
>
> For details, please see my blogpost, Open Access:  Roles for the
> Aggregators:
> http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2008/03/open-access-roles-for-
> aggregators.html
>
> Any opinion expressed in this e-mail is that of the author alone,
> and does not represent 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