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

[Peter Murray-Rust]

I agree with Jan's analysis.
There is now mounting evidence that it costs about 100 USD to publish an
adequate qualilty open peer-reviewed scientific paper. In total.
My evidence:
* IUCr publishes 3000 OA papers a year (Acta Cryst E), IN FULLY SEMANTIC
FORM for 150USD which gives a useful "profit". They do this because they
have engaged the authors who willingly do much of the work for
them. Authors do it because IUCr has built the authoring system and it's
far better than anything the main publishers have come up with.
* It costs 7 USD to put a paper in arXiv
* PeerJ charges 99 USD for an open peer-reviewed paper. I believe this
figure makes sense.

Nature "has to charge" 10000 USD for an open-access paper because it is
selling glory. Glory commands whatever price people are willing to pay.

Many publishers charge huge amounts for OA because they have an effective
monopoly of the subdiscipline and because they are also selling glory.

Anyone can author and publish a scientific paper without a "publisher".
Every student's thesis is a peer-reviewed piece of science. I know some
universities opt out of the process by getting student to publish in closed
access journals and then simply collecting the papers. These unievrsities
are part of the problem.

Many scientists (particularly in CompSci) run peer-reviewed workshops for
dissemination and merit and do the whole lot without publishers.
Traditionally they may get the proceedings published through a publisher
but this is not necessary.

So;
* publishers are not necessary for top-quality peer review
* publishers are not necessary for the technical creation of high-quality
documents

Traditional publishers now have exactly two unique selling points:
* they sell perceived glory to universities
* they "persuade" universities and authors to give them highly valuable
material and then use the legal mechanisms of the last 200 years to control
and resell content.

Both are very fragile. If either crashes then the publisher has very little
to sell. If both crash so will the publisher.

If Green OA had been done properly - in 1995 - then I would be a supporter.
Basically every university would have required its outputs to be fully
posted on the web. Departments and  individuals would be judged on that.
Instead of building repositories they should have built publishing systems.
By now we would have the whole of STM on the web.

But in the 15 years of supine inaction by universities the publishers have
now hired enough marketers, lawyers and created so much FUD that
universities and especially their libraries run in fear of the publishers
and their lawyers.



On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 8:37 AM, Jan Velterop <velterop at gmail.com> wrote:

> --
> 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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