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<DIV>Stevan provides a valuable analysis of the green/gold world we are
entering. The assumption behind so much of the current debate has been that the
current publishing structure should and will continue, but both the economics
and the technology suggest radical change. The Finch Report recommended a
transition to paid gold open access publishing, accepting an increase in cost
during the transition but looking for long-term savings from competition between
publishers and a reduction in the cost of library subscriptions. The difficulty
in achieving significant savings through publisher-competition is that the core
group of STM publishers who own the journals authors most wish to publish in
will still own those journals if they are converted to a gold open access model.
And savings in the purchase by libraries of those must-have journals will not
happen while a large proportion of the content of those journals comes from
outside the UK. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The transition that really would reduce the cost to the taxpayer of
scholarly publishing is a transition away from “big deals”. It is this
transition that the big STM publishers must be most worried about, not the
transition to paid gold OA publishing. The “big deal” model was devised to give
value for money to libraries which would have bought many of the journals in the
package on individual subscription, saving libraries’ administrative costs. The
advantage to the publisher was that libraries became locked into the deals and
sacrificed journals from small publishers and monographs. This fundamental
imbalance in the scholarly communication structure will not be resolved by a
transition to paid gold open access journals. It will not be long before the big
publishers offer “big deals” for the payment of APCs, locking universities into
that model.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>It is in this context that Stevan’s point about the consequence of global
green OA becomes very relevant. Global green OA will show up the absurdity of
providing access to vast numbers of journal articles in packages sold at
inflated prices. Green OA is a single-article model, made powerful by the common
action of a large number of individual authors and their institutions. While the
starting-point for green OA is the single-article, value could be added through
collections of related articles, turning the current journal-focussed model on
its head. The model is enabled by current and future technology and its economic
value is derived from being embedded in the research community. The academic
community is as capable as any publisher of making a journal article a “version
of record”, and while publishers could still have a role in servicing repository
content, the radical structural change would be that control would remain with
the research community instead of being signed away to commercial enterprises
the research community is unable to influence. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Will this radical change come about? Only if the research community really
pushes for it. Otherwise whether paid gold OA becomes the norm or subscriptions
continue, the taxpayer will continue to pay the price of a flawed research
dissemination structure.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Fred Friend</DIV>
<DIV>Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL</DIV>
<DIV><A
href="http://www.friendofopenaccess.org.uk">http://www.friendofopenaccess.org.uk</A>
</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
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<DIV style="font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A title=amsciforum@gmail.com
href="mailto:amsciforum@gmail.com">Stevan Harnad</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Monday, November 26, 2012 6:20 PM</DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=goal@eprints.org href="mailto:goal@eprints.org">Global
Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> [GOAL] Don't Price Your Gold OA Harvest Till Your Green OA
Seeds Are Sown (and Sprouted)</DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV></DIV>
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<DIV>On 2012-11-26, at 10:22 AM, Richard Poynder wrote:</DIV><BR
class=Apple-interchange-newline>
<BLOCKQUOTE type="cite">
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<BLOCKQUOTE
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class=gmail_quote><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman',serif; FONT-SIZE: 10pt">“We estimate
that a full transition to OA could lead to savings in the region of 10-12%
of the cost base of a subscription publisher.”<BR></SPAN><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman',serif; FONT-SIZE: 10pt">BernsteinResearch
investment analyst Claudio Aspesi<BR></SPAN><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman',serif; FONT-SIZE: 10pt">The key
question: if that estimate is accurate, will those savings be passed on to
the research community?<BR></SPAN><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman',serif; FONT-SIZE: 10pt"><A
style="COLOR: purple"
href="http://bit.ly/QFOPeI">http://bit.ly/QFOPeI</A></SPAN></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE><BR></DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents>I think that what Richard is worrying about
here is whether the cost-cutting that a transition from subscription publishing
to Gold OA publishing would make possible (e.g., curtailing the print edition)
would be reflected in lower Gold OA charges to the author/institution or they
would simply be absorbed by the publisher (Aspesi's (2012) test case being
Elsevier), leaving Gold OA charges higher than they need to be.</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents>I join this speculation and counter-speculation only
reluctantly, for two reasons: </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents>(1) I think there are significant transition factors
that none of the economic analyses has yet fully taken into account, and hence
that the potential savings are still being considerably underestimated.</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents>(2) I also think this focus on predicting the costs
of Gold OA just reinforces the excessive preoccupation with estimating the costs
and benefits of pre-emptive Gold OA rather than <I>the costs and benefits of OA
itself</I>, and what is needed, practically, for facilitating a transition to OA
itself, rather than just a direct transition to Gold OA in particular.</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents><I>Post-Green Gold will cost far less than the
pre-emptive pre-Green Gold that the economic analyses keep estimating.</I></DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents>We keep counting the "savings" from generic Gold OA
publishing without reckoning how to get there, and whether <I>the transition
itself </I>might not be a major determinant in the potential for savings (from
OA as well as from Gold OA).</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents>I am not an economist, so I will not try to do
anything more than to point out the main factor that I believe the economic
analyses are failing to take into account:</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents>If Green OA self-archiving in institutional
repositories is mandated globally by institutions and funders, this will have
two major consequences: </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents>I. First, not only will globally mandated Green OA
provide universal OA (and all of its benefits, scientific and economic)
alongside subscription publishing, at minimal additional cost (because (a)
repositories are relatively cheap to create and maintain, (b) most
research-active institutions have created them already, and (c) have done so for
multiple purposes, OA being only one of them).</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents>II. Second, mandating Green OA globally
(unlike pre-emptive Gold OA) also puts <I>competitive</I> pressure on
subscription publishers to cut obsolete costs, because <I>the universal
availability of the Green OA version makes it much easier for cash-strapped
institutions to cancel their journal subscriptions.</I></DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents><I><BR></I></DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents>Not only can the print edition and its costs be
phased out under cancelation pressure from global Green OA, but so can the
publisher's online edition and version of record: The worldwide network of Green
OA repositories and their many central harvesters are perfectly capable of
generating, hosting, archiving and providing access to the version-of-record. No
more PDF or XML needed from the publisher; nor archiving; nor access provision;
nor marketing; nor fulfillment. Nor any of their associated expenses.</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents>All that's needed from the publisher is the service
of managing the peer review (peers review for free) and the certification of its
outcome with the journal's title and track-record.</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents>That's <I>post-Green</I> Gold OA publishing.
Compared to that, all the economical estimates of savings are
under-estimates.</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents>Nor will there be any need for mega-publishers (like
Elsevier), publishing vast fleets of unrelated journals; nor for
mega-journals (like PLoS ONE), publishing vast flocks of unrelated articles.
There are many narrow research specialities, a few wider ones, and a few even
wider, multidisciplinary ones. They each have their own peers, and they each
need their own peer-reviewed journals, and, depending on the size of the field,
perhaps several journals, forming a pyramid of quality standards, the most
selective (hence smallest) at the top.</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents>There may have been economies of scale for multiple
journal production, in the Gutenberg days. But in the PostGutenberg era, with
post-Green Gold OA journals, providing only the service of peer review, there
will be no need for generic refereeing being mass-marketed by generic editorial
assistants for mega-publishers or mega-journals, where no one other than the
referee (if well-selected) knows anything about the subject matter.</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents>So besides scaling down to the post-Green OA
essentials, post-Green Gold OA journals will also revert to the independent,
peer-based titles that they were before being bought up for by the
post-Maxwellian publisher megalopolies. The online-era economies will come from
restoring journals' own natural speciality scale rather than from agglomerating
them into generic multiple money-makers.</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents>Aspesi, C (2012) <A
href="http://www.richardpoynder.co.uk/OAcosts.pdf">Reed Elsevier: Transitioning
to Open Access - Are the Cost Savings Sufficient to Protect Margins?</A>
BernsteinResearch November 26 </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica; FONT-SIZE: medium"
class=AppleOriginalContents>
<DIV class=AppleOriginalContents>Harnad, S. (2007) <A
href="http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13309/">The Green Road to Open Access: A
Leveraged Transition</A>. In: Anna Gacs. <I>The Culture of Periodicals from the
Perspective of the Electronic Age</I>. L'Harmattan. 99-106. </DIV>
<DIV class=AppleOriginalContents> </DIV>
<DIV class=AppleOriginalContents>(2009) <A
href="http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15617/">The PostGutenberg Open Access
Journal</A>. In: Cope, B. & Phillips, A (Eds.) <I>The Future of the Academic
Journal</I>. Chandos. </DIV>
<DIV class=AppleOriginalContents> </DIV>
<DIV class=AppleOriginalContents>(2010) <A
href="http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/21348/">No-Fault Peer Review Charges: The
Price of Selectivity Need Not Be Access Denied or Delayed</A>. <I>D-Lib
Magazine</I> 16 (7/8). </DIV>
<DIV class=AppleOriginalContents> </DIV>
<DIV class=AppleOriginalContents>(2010) <A
href="http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/18514">The Immediate Practical Implication
of the Houghton Report: Provide Green Open Access Now</A>. <I>Prometheus</I>, 28
(1). pp. 55-59. </DIV>
<DIV class=AppleOriginalContents> </DIV>
<DIV class=AppleOriginalContents>Houghton, John W. & Swan, Alma (2012)
<A
href="http://www.cfses.com/projects/Going%20for%20Gold%20-%20Comment%20and%20Clarification%20%28Houghton%20and%20Swan%29.pdf">Planting
the green seeds for a golden harvest</A>. Comments and clarifications on “Going
for Gold” </DIV>
<DIV class=AppleOriginalContents> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV></DIV>
<P>
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