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

[Guédon Jean-Claude]

One quick point in response to Dana Roth: The vocabulary of "business model" can be misleading because it treats a consortial effort of libraries as if it had to function like a business. libraries do pretty poorly as businesses - they are all subsidized.

This said, the SCOAP financial scheme appears fragile to me.

Jean-Claude Guédon 


-------- Message d'origine--------
De: goal-bounces at eprints.org de la part de Dana Roth
Date: mer. 26/09/2012 12:58
À: 'Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)'
Objet : [GOAL] RE :   SCOAP3 Gold OA "Membership": Unnecessary,Unscalable & Unsustainable
 
Doesn't common sense argue against adopting a business model based on donations?

Dana L. Roth 
Millikan Library / Caltech 1-32 
1200 E. California Blvd. Pasadena, CA 91125 
626-395-6423  fax 626-792-7540 
dzrlib at library.caltech.edu 
http://library.caltech.edu/collections/chemistry.htm 


-----Original Message-----
From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf Of Guédon Jean-Claude
Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2012 8:04 AM
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci); Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Subject: [GOAL] RE : SCOAP3 Gold OA "Membership": Unnecessary,Unscalable & Unsustainable

This is avery good example of one constant flaw in Stevan Harnad's reasoning. It has to do with point 5.

It may be true that the high-energy physics community would have achieved more for OA if it had put all of its weight behind green OA. I will go further: in my own opinion, in agreement with Stevan Harnad, it would have been better if they had done so.

The point, however, is that they did not. And this is what Stevan Harnad has difficulties dealing with: some people hold viewpoints different from one's own, yet track common objectives. One cannot expect to change them. At least, changing peoples' minds often prove very difficult and very costly. I could say with a smile that if Stevan Harnad, with his relentless determination, has not succeeded, who will? And would it have not been better for Stevan Harnad to use all that extraordinary energy bolstering his own approach rather than trying to change others? Green OA might be farther ahead if he were not so intent on lining up all the ducks (or rather herding academic cats in this instance) all the time.

And it would bring yet another advantage: it would help keep the OA community closer together. We should always bear in mind that much more unites us than separates us. Being a little more inclusive may bring in slightly messier forms of reasoning, but this is compensated by a greater collective strength.

So, yes! There are design problems with the SCOAP project, but it is going forward and it will be going forward whatever anyone tries to do to stop it or derail it. I, for one, would never want to do this. Why? Because, at the end of the day, SCOAP3 will prove to be a positive contribution to the OA movement, even if it should ultimately prove unstable. And instability does not necessarily mean failure; it may mean morphing into something else, like a junction between ArXiv and SCOAP. The flow of history is not based on logic (alas); it is based on remixing available resources through meandering paths.




-------- Message d'origine--------
De: goal-bounces at eprints.org de la part de Stevan Harnad
Date: mer. 26/09/2012 09:31
À: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Objet : [GOAL]  SCOAP3 Gold OA "Membership": Unnecessary,Unscalable & Unsustainable
 
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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