[GOAL] Re: Open access: What price affordability?

[Stevan Harnad]

On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 12:47 PM, Richard Poynder <
ricky at richardpoynder.co.uk> wrote:

>
>
> [W]hat if funders, governments and research institutions ceased providing
> money for researchers to pay to publish, and instead insisted that they
> continue publishing in subscription journals—but always self-archived their
> papers in OA repositories (green OA)? Would this not mean that publishers
> would have to compete with repositories in access provision? And would they
> not as a result lower their prices? And if they did, could we not hope to
> see both the accessibility and affordability problems resolved?
>

It's enough to cease providing money for researchers to pay to publish
(gold OA) -- no need to insist that they continue publishing in
subscription journals, just that the always self-archive their paper in
their institutional OA repository (green OA) immediately upon acceptance
for publication. Nature will take care of the rest (a transition from
today's access-denial, embargoes and fool's gold to universal green OA,
fair gold, and all the re-use rights for which PM-R is so impatient (but
which he has no better or faster way to reach). (By the way, the
repositories' automated request-copy <http://j.mp/RequestCopyButton> Button
<https://www.google.com/webhp?tbm=blg&gws_rd=ssl#q=harnad+button&tbm=blg>
will tide over any publisher green OA embargoes with just one click from a
user to request -- and one click from the author to provide -- a single
copy for research purposes.)


Harnad, S (2014) The only way to make inflated journal subscriptions
unsustainable: Mandate Green Open Access
<http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/04/28/inflated-subscriptions-unsustainable-harnad/>
. *LSE Impact of Social Sciences Blog **4/28*
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/04/28/inflated-subscriptions-unsustainable-harnad/


Sale, A., Couture, M., Rodrigues, E., Carr, L. and Harnad, S. (2012) Open
Access Mandates and the "Fair Dealing" Button
<http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/18511/>. In: *Dynamic Fair Dealing:
Creating Canadian Culture Online* (Rosemary J. Coombe & Darren Wershler,
Eds.) http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/18511/

Stevan Harnad


On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 8:19 AM, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:

>
>
>
> On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 12:47 PM, Richard Poynder <
> ricky at richardpoynder.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> I have had an editorial published in ecancer journal with the above
>> title.
>>
>>
>>
>> The final two paragraphs read:
>>
>>
>>
>> [W]hat if funders, governments and research institutions ceased providing
>> money for researchers to pay to publish, and instead insisted that they
>> continue publishing in subscription journals—but always self-archived their
>> papers in OA repositories (green OA)? Would this not mean that publishers
>> would have to compete with repositories in access provision? And would they
>> not as a result lower their prices? And if they did, could we not hope to
>> see both the accessibility and affordability problems resolved?
>>
>
> I would find this completely unacceptable.
>
> Firstly the publishers have always set the rules , on price, embargo and
> re-use. This will strengthen their position as the controllers, not
> services, of publication.
>
> For me it would mean the scholarly poor could often not read an article
> till 2 years after publication, could not datamine it for commercial
> purposes, could not re-use it for teaching without permission (teaching =
> commercial), could not aggregate into reviews, could not re-use diagrams.
> It would be no better than what we  have now.
>
> And it would never happen because the funders have never been able to
> exercise enough power to mandate authors and universities have never
> managed to enforce anything. We would have to employ a lot more police.
>
> --
> Peter Murray-Rust
> Reader in Molecular Informatics
> Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
> University of Cambridge
> CB2 1EW, UK
> +44-1223-763069
>
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>
>
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