[BOAI] Some Reflection from Wellcome Would Be Welcome

[Stevan Harnad]

It's time for the Wellcome Trust to think more deeply about its endlessly
repeated mantra that the "cost of publication is part of the cost of
funding research."

The statement is true enough, but profoundly incomplete: As a private
foundation, Wellcome only funds researchers' research. It does not have to
fund their institutional journal subscriptions, which are currently paying
the costs of publication for all non-OA research. And without access to
those subscription journals, researchers would *lose* access to everything
that is not yet Open Access (OA) -- which means access to most of currently
published research. Moreover, if those subscriptions stopped being paid, no
one would be paying the costs of publication.

In the UK, it is the tax-payer who pays the costs of publication (which is
"part of the cost of funding research"), by paying the cost of journal
access via institutional subscriptions. It is fine to wish that to be
otherwise, but it cannot just be wished away, and Wellcome has never had to
worry about paying for it.

The Wellcome slogan and solution -- the "cost of publication is part of the
cost of funding research," so pay pre-emptively for Gold OA -- works for
Wellcome, and as a wish list. But it is not a formula for getting us all
from here (c. 30% OA, mostly Green) to there (100% OA). It does not scale
up from Wellcome to the UK, let alone to the rest of the world. What scales
up is mandating Green OA. Once Green OA reaches 100%, journals can be
cancelled, forcing them to downsize and convert to Fair Gold, single-paid
at an affordable, sustianable price, instead of double-paid pre-emptively
at today's arbitrarily inflated Fools-Gold price.

Hence it is exceedingly bad advice on Wellcome's part, to urge the UK, that
because the "cost of publication is part of the cost of funding research,"
the UK should double-pay (subscriptions + Gold OA) for what Wellcome itself
only needs to single-pay. (And this is without even getting into the sticky
question of overpricing and double-dipping.)

Wellcome took a bold and pioneering step in
2004<http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/4115.html> in
mandating OA.

But in since cleaving unreflectively to pre-emptive payment for Gold OA as
the preferred means of providing OA -- because Wellcome does not have to
pay for subscriptions -- the net effect of the Wellcome pioneering
intiative is now beginning to turn negative rather than positive.

I hope the BIS Report<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/1040-UK-BIS-Committee-2013-Report-on-Open-Access.html>
will
encourage Wellcome to re-think the rigid route that it has been promoting
for a decade, culminating in the Finch Fiasco.

*Stevan Harnad*
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