[BOAI] Re: The Life and Death of an Open Access Journal: Q&A with Librarian Marcus Banks

[Prof. T.D. Wilson]

Jean-Claude Guedon is right to draw attention to the distinction between
truly open access - which I define as "open at both ends" (i.e., at
submission and use), and for which I coined the term "Platinum OA", which
was picked up and used by a few others - the use of a completely different
term to define true OA would certainly end the confusion.

Publishers, naturally, find it difficult to cope with Platinum OA, since,
by definition it earns no income.  I assume that the MLA subsidises its OA
journal and that members of the MLA find it an appropriate use of their
subscriptions.

Information Research (http://informationr.net/ir/) is now in its 20th year
of publication as a truly open access journal - it has no income, functions
with voluntary regional editors, copy-editors and layout editors - the only
direct costs are those associated with the maintenance of the server, which
is undertaken, in support of the journal, by Lund University.  In other
words, Platinum OA is possible, if academics are motivated to ensure its
possibility.  Sadly, because of the current publish or perish syndrome and
the curse of the impact factor, most academics are concerned only with
getting their papers published, and many have no real idea of what open
access is and why it might work to their advantage.

Tom Wilson

On 31 March 2015 at 14:21, Guédon Jean-Claude <
jean.claude.guedon at umontreal.ca> wrote:

> Could I, once more, ask Richard Poynder (and many others) not to confuse
> Gold OA and APC-Gold.
>
> APC-Gold is uncovering problems that had not been anticipated at first.
> Poynder mentions one in his note, and assigns it to the whole Gold OA.
> Predatory journals exist only because the APC-Gold business model opens the
> door to this odious kind od polluting and parasitic behaviour. However, and
> I repeat, APC-Gold is but one subset of Gold OA.
>
> Is it so difficult to understand?
>
> Just to make things very, very clear: Gold OA is agnostic with regard to
> business plans, and it does not limit itself to one business plan. This is
> a form of thinking-in-a-box that requires the breaking of the box.
>
> Jean-Claude Guédon
> ________________________________
> De : boai-forum-bounces at ecs.soton.ac.uk [
> boai-forum-bounces at ecs.soton.ac.uk] de la part de Richard Poynder [
> richard.poynder at cantab.net]
> Envoyé : mardi 31 mars 2015 08:10
> À : boai-forum at ecs.soton.ac.uk
> Objet : [BOAI] The Life and Death of an Open Access Journal: Q&A with
> Librarian Marcus Banks
>
> Despite their high profile advocacy for open access, many librarians have
> proved strangely reluctant to practice what they preach. As late as last
> year calls were still being made for the profession to start “walking the
> talk”.
>
> On the other hand, many librarians have embraced OA, particularly medical
> librarians. In 2001, for instance, the Journal of the Medical Library
> Association (JMLA) began to make its content freely available on the
> Internet. And in 2003 Charles Greenberg, then at the Yale University
> Medical Library, launched an open access journal with BioMed Central called
> Biomedical Digital Libraries (BDL). One of the first to join the editorial
> board (and later to take over as Editor-in-Chief) was Marcus Banks, who was
> then working at the US National Library of Medicine.
>
> Four years later, however, BDL became a victim of BMC’s decision to
> increase the cost of the article-processing charges (APCs) it levies. This
> meant that few librarians were able to afford to publish in the journal any
> longer, and submissions began to dry up. Despite several attempts to move
> BDL to a different publishing platform, in 2008 Banks had to make the hard
> decision to cease publishing the journal.
>
> What do we learn from BDL’s short life? In advocating for pay-to-publish
> gold OA did open access advocates underestimate how much it costs to
> publish a journal? Or have publishers simply been able to capture open
> access and use it to further ramp up what many believe to be their
> excessive profits? Why has JMLA continued to prosper under open access
> while BDL has withered and died? Was BDL unable to compete with JMLA on a
> level playing field? Could the demise of BDL have been avoided?  What, if
> anything, does the journal’s fate tell us about the future of open access?
>
> These and other questions are discussed with Banks in a Q&A interview here:
>
>
> http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/the-life-and-death-of-open-access.html
>
>
>
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-- 
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T.D. Wilson, PhD (Sheffield), PhD, h.c.(Gothenburg), PhD, h.c.(Murcia),
Professor Emeritus, University of Sheffield
Publisher and Editor in Chief: Information Research
http://informationr.net/ir/
E-mail: t.d.wilson at shef.ac.uk <wilsontd at gmail.com>
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