[GOAL] Re: Disruption vs. Protection

[Andrew A. Adams]

Journal cancellation rates are currently almost impossible to judge, at least 
for the big publishers because of the "big deals". The big deal subscriptions 
mean that many libraries are subscribing either to whole publisher 
archives/fleets or at least to whole subjects. In those circumstances 
institutions cannot unsubscribe from individual journals until and unless 
sufficient journals could be included to drop the price of the remaining 
necessary journal subscriptions to below the big deal cost.

All the cancellation (because of Green OA) talk is entirely speculative and 
pretty much impossible to model (because so many other things are also 
changing at the same time) that we must focus on cutting through the Gordian 
knot of "transitions to sustainable publishing" by mandating Green OA 
(Immediate Deposit/Optional Access where necessary) and let the disruptions 
to publishing take its course as it may.

Some argue that publishing and journals are so important to academia that we 
must be careful not to undermine them. I make the opposite evaluation: 
journals and peer review are so important to academia that if Green OA (so 
far as we can tell from some pretty decent evidence quickly achievable by 
Mandates [and only by mandates]) causes significant disruption to journal 
publishing viability, that the relevant communities would quickly find a way 
to ensure the survival of the important avenues of communications by means 
other than the current subscription model.

-- 
Professor Andrew A Adams                      aaa at meiji.ac.jp
Professor at Graduate School of Business Administration,  and
Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics
Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan       http://www.a-cubed.info/