[GOAL] Re: Scholarly Publishing: Where is Plan B?

[Stevan Harnad]

On Fri, Mar 2, 2012 at 3:19 AM, Richard Poynder
<ricky at richardpoynder.co.uk> wrote:
> To the intense joy of OA advocates, Elsevier announced Monday that it has
> withdrawn its support for the controversial US Research Works Act.
>
> One person who took particular note of the news was Claudio Aspesi, a senior
> research analyst at the sell-side research firm Sanford Bernstein. Aspesi
> tracks Elsevier for investors, so on Tuesday he published a new report on
> the company.
>
> While welcoming Elsevier's decision, Aspesi concluded, “Consensus is still
> treating Elsevier’s problems as cyclical, in spite of the rising evidence
> the issues are deeper”.
>
> More here: http://bit.ly/yf1hqf

Plan C for Open Access: Flea Powder

I've said it before. Maybe the time is now approaching when people
will actually listen:

1. Research libraries cannot, need not and will not cancel journals
until all or almost all their contents are freely accessible to their
users by some other means.

2. Boycotting authors cannot, need not and will not stop publishing in
or reviewing for their best journals: It is neither necessary nor
realistic. There are easier and better ways to make those journals'
contents freely accessible.

3. Researchers cannot, need not and will not stop serving on the
editorial boards of their best journals. It is neither necessary nor
realistic. There are easier and better ways to make those journals'
contents freely accessible.

4. Research and researchers cannot, need not and will not abandon peer
review. It is neither necessary nor realistic. There are easier and
better ways to make those journals' contents freely accessible.

5. Journals cannot, need not and will not convert to Gold Open Access
publishing today: That would simply make OA as unaffordable as
subscription access (at current prices).

6. What those who are preoccupied with the journal pricing and
economics keep overlooking is that the one and only reason it matters
so much that journals are overpriced and unaffordable is that there is
no other way to access their contents.

7. Hence only one course of action is realistic, feasible and makes
sense: It will remedy the accessibility problem completely and it will
eventually drive down journal expenses and prices as well as induce a
conversion to Gold OA publishing at an affordable rate.

8. That course of action is for universities and research funders to
mandate Green OA self-archiving.

9. Once Green OA self-archiving becomes universal because it is
universally mandated, the research accessibility is solved.

10. Once the research accessibility problem is solved, journal
affordability is no longer a life-or-death matter: libraries can
cancel journals because their contents are freely accessible to their
users by some other means.

11. Once post-Green-OA cancellations make subscriptions unsustainable
for meeting publishing costs, publishers will downsize to just the
cost of peer review alone, offloading access provision and archiving
onto institutional OA repositories, and converting to Gold OA
publishing.

12. Universities will then have the funds to pay the much lower costs
of peer review alone out of their windfall subscription cancelation
savings.

(It is this optimal and inevitable outcome for research and
researchers that the publishers' lobby is doing its best to forestall
as long as it possibly can. But it's entirely up to the research
community how long they allow them to do it. As long as they do, it
amounts to allowing the flea on its tail to wag the research/dog…)

Harnad, S. (2007) The Green Road to Open Access: A Leveraged
Transition. In: Anna Gacs. The Culture of Periodicals from the
Perspective of the Electronic Age. L'Harmattan. 99-106.
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13309/

Harnad, S. (2009) The PostGutenberg Open Access Journal. In: Cope, B.
& Phillips, A (Eds.) The Future of the Academic Journal. Chandos.
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15617/

Harnad, S. (2010) No-Fault Peer Review Charges: The Price of
Selectivity Need Not Be Access Denied or Delayed. D-Lib Magazine 16
(7/8). http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/21348/

Harnad, S. (2010) The Immediate Practical Implication of the Houghton
Report: Provide Green Open Access Now. Prometheus, 28 (1). pp. 55-59.
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/18514

Harnad, S. (2011) Open Access to Research: Changing Researcher
Behavior Through University and Funder Mandates. JEDEM Journal of
Democracy and Open Government 3 (1): 33-41.
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/22401/

Harnad, Stevan (2011) Open Access Is a Research Community Matter, Not
a Publishing Community Matter. Lifelong Learning in Europe.
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/22403/