[GOAL] Re: SCOAP3 Gold OA "Membership": Unnecessary, Unscalable & Unsustainable

[Lars Bjørnshauge]

Dear Stevan,

you wrote: "The time to convert to Gold OA is when mandatory Green OA
prevails globally across all disciplines and institutions".

My comment/question: and this will all of a sudden happen one fine day of
the 12th of March 2025 or 2035 or 2045 and then we can start discussing
implementing Gold OA?

Dream on.

Those of us who are in a balanced way trying to promote various models for
transitioning to OA are apparently ignorant, on the wrong track etc.
Posting like the one I react to here will not make it easier to advocate
for Green OA, but rather make it easier to advocate for Gold OA.

The SCOAP3 group, who has worked so hard to make this happen - shame on
them, or what, Stevan?

regards

Lars Bjørnshauge
Director SPARC Europe



2012/9/26 Stevan Harnad <amsciforum at gmail.com>

> 1. High Energy Physics (HEP) already has close to 100% Open Access (OA):
> Authors have been self-archiving their articles in Arxiv<http://arxiv.org/show_monthly_submissions> (both
> before and after peer review) since 1991 ("Green OA").
>
> 2. Hence SCOAP3 <http://scoap3.org/> is just substituting the payment of
> consortial "membership" <http://bit.ly/sc3memb> fees for publishing
> outgoing articles in place of the payment of individual institutional
> subscription fees for accessing incoming articles in exchange for an OA
> from its publisher ("Gold OA") that HEP already had from self-archiving
> (Green OA).
>
> 3. As such, SCOAP3 is just a consortial subscription price agreement,
> except that it is inherently unstable, because once all journal content is
> Gold OA, non-members are free-riders, and members can cancel if they feel a
> budget crunch.
>
> 4. Nor does membership scale to other disciplines.
>
> 5. High Energy Physics would have done global Open Access a better service
> if it had put its full weight behind promoting (Green OA) mandates to
> self-archive by institutions and research funders in all other disciplines.
>
> 6. The time to convert to Gold OA is when mandatory Green OA prevails
> globally across all disciplines and institutions.
>
> 7. Institutions can then cancel subscriptions and pay for peer review
> service alone <http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/271348/>, per individual paper,
> out of a portion of their windfall cancelation savings, instead of en bloc,
> in an unstable (and overpriced) consortial "membership."
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>
>


-- 
Lars Bjørnshauge

SPARC´s Director of European Library Relations

mobile phone: +45 53 51 06 03

Skype-Id: lbj-lub0603

Twitter: elbjoern0603

e.mail: lars at arl.org - elbjoern0603 at gmail.com
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