[GOAL] Re: Quo vadere?

[Arthur Sale]

Stevan and others, response interspersed.

Arthur

 

From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
Sent: Tuesday, 5 January 2016 10:21 AM
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Subject: [GOAL] Re: Quo vadere?

 

On Mon, Jan 4, 2016 at 5:19 PM, Arthur Sale <ahjs at ozemail.com.au> wrote:

 

Christian Gutknecht <christian.gutknecht at bluewin.ch> wrote:

I really like the idea to let researchers feel that subscription is an outdated model. And an easy way to do that without upsetting them too much, is to cancel subscriptions and get rid of the Big Deals.

I don’t have access to the raw data now apart from knowing that we fulfill 13,000+ requests a year, but the University of Tasmania has operated a free unlimited-quantity service for 15 years, funded pay-per-view centrally (ie in replacement for subscriptions). 

 

Let me make sure I understand this, Arthur: Are you saying UTas has cancelled all journal subscriptions, and has just just pay per view?

[ahjs] Of course not. That would be the height of stupidity until open access is 100%. But it has enabled us to reduce our subscriptions significantly to those that are economically justifiable, and to measure this against access rates. Freed up money can be used for pay per view, and the economics actually do stack up, Stevan. Nobody reads paper journals any more. For one thing by the time they get to Tasmania they are obsolete.

 

My attention has been drawn to a Library report: ‘From 2014 to June 2015 researchers requested more than 12,000 articles from over 6,000 journals not held by our Library at an approximate cost of $220,000.  Document Delivery represents extraordinary value for money in enabling access to depth and breadth of information resources. In order for the Library to subscribe to each of these titles, this could potentially cost over $3 million (calculated on an average price of $500 per journal title per year).’

 

If I do the calculation for readers of this list, that’s the equivalent of $AUD 37/journal. Note that the University of Tasmania is a wide-scope university, indeed the only one in the State of Tasmania, and we need access to many journals of interest to one or a few researchers working in diverse fields. Those journals of wide interest and read by many remain subscribed or available open access. We recognize this as transitional, but the transition is taking a long time, as you know. Best wishes, and strength to the open access movement. We do our bit in making our research open access as far as the copyright police allow.

 

 

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