[GOAL] Re: Some discussion points for the UK OA initiative

[Stevan Harnad]

On 2012-05-07, at 5:31 PM, <keith.jeffery at stfc.ac.uk> <keith.jeffery at stfc.ac.uk> wrote:

> I know your view on green leveraging gold... [but]
> we are dealing with commercial publishers and commercial imperatives.  
> Why should the publishers reduce gold author pays charges if the academic
> community (especially the funders) are willing to pay?  

According to the leveraging scenario there is absolutely nothing to induce
publishers either to convert to Gold OA or to reduce costs -- *now* -- when
we have only 20% Green OA and few funder and institutional Green OA
mandates.

But leveraging is predicated on scaling up institutional and funder Green
OA self-archiving mandates globally, to make them universal, generating
100% Green OA.

*That*'s what may then eventually lead to cancellation pressure and 
journal downsizing to peer review alone, funded on the Gold OA model.

But there's no reason to hinge it all on that final economic outcome.

Even if universal Green OA mandates "only" generate 100% Green OA,
both the worldwide research community and the tax-paying public that
funds it will be incomparably better off.

(And journal affordability will no longer be a life/death problem, even
if the subscription model survives, because whoever cannot afford
subscription access will still have Green OA access.)

> The evidence to date is that the academic community is willing to pay
> (although I accept the sample of gold channels is relatively small as yet).  

Those are *two* distinct pieces of evidence, Keith:

(1) *Some* parts of the academic community are willing to pay, and
 
(2) Those parts are very small -- not just relatively, but absolutely.

And their growth curve projections are extremely slow, reaching
100% Gold OA only in the 2020's:

See Richard Poynder's "Open Access by the Numbers"
http://www.richardpoynder.co.uk/Open_Access_By_Numbers.pdf

> Gold offers a seductively safe route for academics who object to high
> subscription charges and want maximum exposure of their work

(i) ... for that very small number of academics...

(ii) ...who want maximum exposure *and/or* object to high subscription
charges. (I suspect it's more of the former than the latter.)

> yet are unwilling to face up to the FUD (fear uncertainty and doubt)
> raised by the publishers concerning green OA.

True: This is why institutional and funder mandates are the
crucial factor in accelerating and ensuring the transition to
100% OA while you and I are still compos mentis  -- and that 
is what needs to be focused on and given priority.

> I suspect the majority of a new generation of academics... [will
> go much farther]

Yes, but by that time this generation of OA advocates will be
far under ground. 

We need 100% OA now (yesterday!) and it is within reach.
All that's needed is for institutions and funders worldwide to
mandate it.

> I support strongly green OA as you have defined it as the best mechanism
> we have today.  The problem - as you have documented well - is persuading
> the community.

It is evident by now that the community cannot be persuaded to provide
Green OA (self-archive) of its own initiative (beyond 20%) precisely
because of the FUD you mention.

That's why it is their institutions and funders that need to be made
aware that they can and should mandate Green OA (and why, and
how).

That should be the OA movement's #1 priority (and should have
been all along: we could have had 100% OA a decade ago if
the OA movement had kept its eye on the [green] ball, instead
of contracting gold fever and chasing after gold dust (and libre
luxuries, and copyreform praecox...)

SH


> -----Original Message-----
> From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
> Sent: 07 May 2012 18:55
> To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
> Subject: [GOAL] Re: Some discussion points for the UK OA initiative
> 
> On 2012-05-07, at 12:43 PM, <keith.jeffery at stfc.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
>> I do not believe Global Green would lead to Global Gold.  
>> The motivations and business models behind each are too dissimilar - 
>> as are the likely end-games.
> 
> The motivations need not be similar (and Green OA is not a business model).
> 
> Here's the end-game:
> 
> What the research community needs, urgently, today, is free online access (Open Access, OA) to its own peer-reviewed research output. 
> 
> Researchers can provide that in two ways:
> by publishing their articles in OA journals (Gold OA) or by continuing to publish in non-OA journals and self-archiving their final peer-reviewed drafts in their own OA Institutional Repositories (Green OA). 
> 
> OA self-archiving (Green OA), once it is mandated by research institutions and funders, can reliably generate 100% Green OA. 
> 
> Gold OA requires journals to convert to OA publishing (which is not in the hands of the research community) and it also requires the funds to cover the Gold OA publication costs. With 100% Green OA, the research community's access and impact problems are already solved.
> 
> If and when 100% Green OA should cause significant cancellation pressure the cancellation pressure will cause cost-cutting, downsizing and eventually a leveraged transition to OA (Gold) publishing on the part of journals. 
> 
> As subscription revenues shrink, institutional windfall savings from cancellations grow. 
> 
> If and when journal subscriptions become unsustainable, per-article publishing costs will be low enough, and institutional savings will be high enough to cover them, because publishing will have downsized to just peer-review service provision alone, offloading text-generation onto authors and access-provision and archiving onto the global network of OA Institutional Repositories. 
> 
> Green OA will have leveraged a transition to Gold OA.
> 
> 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/
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