[GOAL] Re: Agreement on Green OA not needed from publishers but from institutions and funders

[Eric F. Van de Velde]

Stevan:
Thomas's "humbug" advice is not incompatible with green open access or with
mandates. In fact, it would accelerate the evolution of open access.

You equate access to the pay-walled literature with institutional site
licenses. There are other ways to gain access:
1. Obtain a personal subscription.
2. Pay per view.
3. Send a nice e-mail to the authors requesting an author-formatted copy.
4. Do a web search with a choice key words, and invariably one version or
another pops up.

In fact, if institutions were to gradually cut subscriptions, they would
give the two unequivocal signals (money talks):
1. To publishers: We mean it when we say scholarly publishing is too
expensive. The superinflationary price increases are stopping now.
2. To faculty: We mean it when we say we will not pay any price for
scholarly literature. You may have to start paying for access yourself OR
you can change where you submit your papers.

It would be nice if, in addition, university administrations would also
make clear that, in this age of change, they will instruct P&T committees
to be open to publications in alternate forms and in non-establishment
journals. This does not require loosening standards. It just acknowledges
that traditional metrics are increasingly weak. Making sure such alternate
publications are of high quality may mean substantially more work for the
P&T committee.
--Eric.

http://scitechsociety.blogspot.com

Google Voice: (626) 898-5415
Telephone:      (626) 376-5415
Skype: efvandevelde -- Twitter: @evdvelde
E-mail: eric.f.vandevelde at gmail.com



On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 7:10 AM, Stevan Harnad <harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk>wrote:

>
> On 2012-06-20, at 9:19 AM, Thomas Krichel wrote:
>
> >  Stevan Harnad writes
> >
> >> Some humble advice for institutions and libraries:
> >> Negotiate with publishers about subscription price.
> >
> >  Some not so humble advice: cut subscriptions.
> >  Spen[d] a part of the savings building the institutional
> >  repository.
>
> And if the institution's users need access to a journal article
> from another institution, today, they should eat cake?
>
> Or look for it, today, in their own institutional repository?
>
> And maybe instead of spending money "building" the
> institutional repository, institutions should mandate
> filling it? The only cost of that is a few extra author
> keystrokes.
>
> Perhaps the subscription cancelling can be saved
> for when 100% of all institutions' articles have been
> deposited and are accessible to all users as Green OA?
>
> Maybe humble advice is more helpful than humbug advice? ;>)
>
> Stevan
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>
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