<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br><div><div>On 19 Jun 2012, at 22:51, Stevan Harnad wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite">On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 4:13 PM, Jan Velterop <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:velterop@gmail.com" target="_blank">velterop@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_quote"><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div style="word-wrap:break-word"><div>Given these difficulties and imponderables associated with 'green', I believe that 'gold' has a much better chance to lead to a stable open access. And the argument that 'green' would be cheaper is not substantiated. In fact, 'gold' is inevitably leading to real competition on price, as authors have a choice, and readers haven't. They need everything that's relevant for them, regardless of price. They can't read one journal out of two in the same field on the ground that it's the cheaper one, even if they are equivalent in terms of perceived quality. Authors can submit to the cheaper one. And where there is real competition, prices have a strong tendency to approach real 'production' costs, of course. </div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>What does journal price competition (whether for subscription price or Gold OA price) have to do with Green OA and Green OA mandates, which apply to all journal articles?</div></div></blockquote><div><br></div>There is *no* price competition for subscriptions. That is part of the problem. There *is* for 'gold' OA. And price competition is an issue ever since the argument that "'green' is cheaper" crept into the discussion. A 'gold' article is not included in any subscription and therefore not contributing to a subscription price increase. Even if the per-article price of 'gold' (the APC) is equal to the average per-article revenue of subscriptions, the total cost to the system goes up by no more than the increase in number of articles, exactly the same as for 'green' (which relies on subscriptions being continued). But the price of 'gold' is likely to go down (indeed, per article it is already lower than subscriptions) as a result of competition. If looked at it on a world scale, there is no extra cost for 'gold', quite the opposite. The fact that the Finch report mentions that there is, doesn't alter that. The extra cost is a fallacy, at least on a world scale. What is likely is that the costs would be redistributed, which means that for individual institutions and even countries (the ones with the highest productivity in terms of articles published) the costs may indeed go up. This is compensated for by the costs for less productive institutions (e.g. teaching-focussed ones as opposed to research-focussed) and countries going down. And by the cost for the whole system going down. Which it is very likely to do, substantially, if journals such as PeerJ take off, which they no-doubt will, in my view.</div><div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div class="gmail_quote"><div><br>
</div><div>What are the "difficulties and imponderables" with Green -- other than the uphill quest to get more Green mandates adopted and optimized worldwide (a quest made more difficult by the ponderous publisher FUD with which gullible Finch committees gratuitously saddle the climb)?</div></div></blockquote><div><br></div>I don't think characterising the Finch Committee as gullible is doing the cause of open access any good.</div><div><br></div><div>Jan</div><div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div class="gmail_quote">
<div><br></div><div>Stevan Harnad</div></div>
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