[GOAL] Re: Dreadful Daily Mail article on Open Access

[Eric F. Van de Velde]

Stevan:
Very well argued. As usual.

You convince me and, probably, most members of this list. My question is:
Will that argument be a winning one outside the realm of the ivory tower?

It seems to me the UK publishers are taking their fight to an arena where
they're in a much better position. Apparently, their access to 10 Downing
Street remains strong. UK GOAL list members: Keep your voice mail safe!
--Eric.

http://scitechsociety.blogspot.com

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On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 12:40 PM, Stevan Harnad <amsciforum at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 2:47 PM, Eric F. Van de Velde
>
> When replacing a high-margin industry with a low-margin one, when
>> increasing efficiency in the distribution by going open access, there will
>> be job losses and job substitutions in the whole pipeline of information
>> delivery. These costs of Open access do not invalidate the goals and the
>> value of open access...
>>
>
>>  How this evolution was supposed to happen was always a bit foggy....
>>
>
>> Open access will destroy jobs initially, but it will also create jobs by
>> making access to research free, which is particularly significant for
>> start-up ventures. It may also lower the cost of education or, at least,
>> help tame the educational rate of inflation...
>
>
> We can speculate about the transition from the subscription model for
> recovering the costs of publication to the Gold OA model for recovering the
> (down-sized) costs of post-Green-OA publication.
>
> But that is not what is at issue here. What is at issue here is an attempt
> to halt or marginalize Green OA mandates on the grounds that they may
> eventually cause the subscription model to become unsustainable.
>
> There's nothing wrong with speculating about and even planning for the
> hypothetical transition.
>
> But there's everything wrong with trying to stop it from happening.
>
> Nor are the only interests involved, or the most important ones, those of
> a "high-margin industry [transitioning into] a low-margin one" (i.e., the
> publication industry).
>
> Far higher-stake players are the public research funding system, the
> university research system, the vast R&D industry, research itself, and the
> tax-paying public, who, to repeat, are not funding research to keep a
> high-margin industry from downsizing to a low-margin industry by denying
> research the open access that the online medium and technology have made
> possible.
>
> If the Finch Report had recommended, as it should have: "Full speed ahead
> with extending and strengthening Green OA mandates in the UK and wordlwide
> -- and then lets plan on the transition from the subscription model for
> recovering the costs of publication to the Gold OA model for recovering the
> (down-sized) costs of post-Green-OA publication if and when Green OA makes
> subscriptions unsustainable" no one would have had the slightest objection.
>
> But that's not at all what the Finch Report recommended. It declared Green
> OA a failure that would have threatened the survival of the publishing
> industry and it recommended instead a slow (foggy) evolution by spending
> money pre-emptively on Gold OA (even though subscriptions are still paying
> the bill in full) rather than on planning for "replacing a high-margin
> industry with a low-margin one."
>
> Indeed, in eliminating Green OA, the Report would eliminate the very
> factor that would see to it not only that the research community soon has
> the OA it needs, at long last, but the factor that would see to it that
> publishing eventually downsizes from the high-margin industry it now is, to
> the low-margin one it will be, post-Green-OA.
>
> So keep pursuing gold-dust, and forget about both OA and downsizing?
>
> No, OA is not primarily about the economics of publishing, it is about the
> pragmatics of research practice and progress in the online era. I called it
> the tail in my prior metaphor, but publishing is more like the flea on the
> tail of the vast, global R&D dog.
>
> How long will it continue to be allowed to block the optimal and
> inevitable for everyone else?
>
> Stevan Harnad
>
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>
>
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