[GOAL] Re: Planning for the Open Access Era

Tue Aug 7 16:55:18 BST 2012

Chris,

The nice thing about true open access articles (under a CC-BY licence) is that they can be printed and distributed, even for a profit (CC-BY publishers are not consumed by 'profit-spite'). This is not true for the so-called OA articles which are under a Non-Commercial licence, of course, but they are not real open access). 

Here lies an opportunity for enterprising minds in developing countries!

Best,

Jan

On 7 Aug 2012, at 17:27, Zielinski, Mr. Chris - bzv wrote:

> …and don’t forget the cost of printing, paper, glue and postage stamps in the original print version, O Digerati: last time I checked, they weren’t being given away for nothing. While much of the Open Access discussion only applies to digital objects, these existential OA cost comparisons must include the costs of paper versions as well. where there is a paper version at all,
>  
> Or are we only talking about that motherless object, the online-only journal (useless to many in most developing countries)?
>  
> Best,
>  
> Chris
>  
> Chris Zielinski
> Coordinator, African Health Observartory and
> Managing Editor, African Health Monitor
> WHO Regional Office for Africa
> BP06 Cité du Djoué, Brazzaville, Congo
> Brazzaville T: +47 241 39935  M: +242-068 29 79 49  F: +47 241 39503
> Geneva: M+41 799 40 3662
> Skype: chris.zielinski1 e-mail: zielinskic at afro.who.int
>  
>  
> From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf Of Sally Morris
> Sent: 07 August 2012 16:00
> To: 'Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)'
> Subject: [GOAL] Re: Planning for the Open Access Era
>  
> Do you think that doesn't entail cost?
>  
> The people who are doing this work 'free' (and the computer services provided 'free', etc) are all in reality being paid by someone to do their 'real' jobs.  And, presumably, the amount of time devoted to those 'real' jobs is accordingly reduced.
>  
> Sally
>  
>  
> Sally Morris
> South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex, UK  BN13 3UU
> Tel:  +44 (0)1903 871286
> Email:  sally at morris-assocs.demon.co.uk
>  
>  
> From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf Of Peter Murray-Rust
> Sent: 07 August 2012 15:12
> To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
> Subject: [GOAL] Re: Planning for the Open Access Era
> 
>  
> 
> On Tue, Aug 7, 2012 at 11:27 AM, Sally Morris <sally at morris-assocs.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> We should not delude ourselves; journals can only be 'free' if someone pays
> the costs.
> 
> All the work involved in creating and running a journal has to be paid for
> somehow - they don't magically go away if a journal is e-only (in fact,
> there are some new costs, even though some of the old ones disappear).
> 
> I can only see three options for who pays:  reader-side (e.g. the library);
> author-side (e.g. publication fees);  or 'fairy godmother' (e.g. sponsor).
> 
> There is a fourth option, which works: the scholarly community manage publication through contributed labour and resources and the net amount of cash is near-zero. This is described inhttp://blogs.law.harvard.edu/pamphlet/2012/03/06/an-efficient-journal/ where the J. Machine Learning Research is among the highest regarded journals in the area (top 7%) and free-to-authors and free-to-readers. There is an enlightening debate (on this URL) between those who run the journal and Kent Anderson of the Scholarly Kitchen who cannot believe that people will run and work for journals for the good of the community.
> 
> There is no law of physics that says this doesn't scale. It is simply that most scholars would rather the taxpayer and students paid for the administration publishing (either as author-side or reader-side) so the scholars don't have to do the work. And they've managed ot get 10 B USD per year. If scholars regarded publishing as part of their role, of if they were prepared to involved the wider community (as Wikipedia has done) we could have a much more C21 type of activity - innovative and valuable to the whole world rather than just academia. It would cost zero, but it would be much cheaper than any current model.
> 
> And of course we now have a complete free map of the whole world (openstreetmap.org) which is so much better than other alternatives that many people and organizations are switching to it. And, for many years, it didn't have a bank account and existed on "marginal resources" from UCL (and probably still does).
> 
> But most people will regard this as another fairy tale.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Peter Murray-Rust
> Reader in Molecular Informatics
> Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
> University of Cambridge
> CB2 1EW, UK
> +44-1223-763069
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