[GOAL] Re: 20 years of cowardice: the pathetic response of American universities to the crisis in scholarly publishing

[Thomas Krichel]

  Steve Hitchcock writes

> A perspective spanning 20 years on this topic that fails to mention
> repositories hardly begins to tackle the issues or the problems.

  How much money in libraries is spent on subscriptions, vs
  repositories? I don't have figures, but I think it's like very much
  vs very little. So an perspective that focus on the big expenditure
  vs the little one seems spot on to me.

> The response of many universities has been pathetic, but not for the
> reasons suggested, and if the problem being addressed is costs
> rather than access, then the proposals here,

  The proposal, as I see it is to reduce subscription to develop
  repositories.

> to forcibly switch journals to gold OA, risks making the access
> problem worse

  More and better filled repositories will ease the access problem,
  and so will the conversion of journals to open access.  Thus the
  aggreate effect of journal subscription cancellations on access is
  not clear. And remember, access through subscription is only one way
  to provide articles. You could also purchase them on a one-to-one
  basis.

  Cheers,

  Thomas Krichel                    http://openlib.org/home/krichel
                                      http://authorprofile.org/pkr1
                                               skype: thomaskrichel