Re: Self-Archiving and Journal Subscriptions

[Peter Suber <peters@earlham.edu>]

Enderby's calculation assumes that all OA journals will charge 
publication fees and that all fees will be paid by universities.

Both assumptions are very implausible.  As you know, most 
peer-reviewed OA journals today charge no publication fees at 
all, and many funding agencies allow grantees to use grant funds 
to pay those fees.  We shouldn't conclude that Enderby's 
calculation shows the future under OA journals, merely the 
consequences of those simplifying and simplistic assumptions.

For my analysis of calculations that rest on those assumptions, 
and suggestions for refining the calculation to make it more 
realistic, see my article, "Good Facts, Bad Predictions," SPARC 
Open Access Newsletter, June 2006, 
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/06-02-06.htm#facts

       Peter Suber


At 12:31 PM 5/22/2007, you wrote:
>I was looking for a data on the cumulative expenditure on
>author-payee open access compared to the subscription based
>access model. Here is a quote from an article by John Enderby:
>
>Researchers in the UK, for example, produce about 75,000 papers a
>year, which means they would have to pay about 100m [pounds] in author
>fees if all journals were open access. This sum is far higher
>than the 90m [pounds] they currently pay in library subscriptions. (The
>open-access debate.
>http://physicsweb.org/articles/world/20/1/4/1 )
>
>Atanu Garai
>Globethics.net