<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><br class=""><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Dec 31, 2015, at 10:59 AM, Thomas Krichel <<a href="mailto:krichel@openlib.org" class="">krichel@openlib.org</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div class=""> Stevan Harnad writes<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">1. Actually, no one really knows why it is taking so long to reach the<br class="">optimal and inevitable outcome -- universal OA --<br class=""></blockquote><br class=""> oh I know. It's because libraries are spending money on subscriptions.<br class=""> And as long as they do, OA remains evitable.</div></div></blockquote><br class=""></div><div>That’s about as useful as saying that "I know why there is poverty:</div><div>because the rich are rich and the poor are poor."</div><div><br class=""></div><div>Not only is it not possible to treat “libraries” as if they were a monolith</div><div>any more than it is possible to treat “authors” as a monolith, </div><div>but it is completely out of the question for a university library</div><div>to cancel subscriptions while its users have no other means to</div><div>access that content. </div><div><br class=""></div><div>(Please don’t reply that they do cancel what they cannot afford: that is </div><div>not relevant. Libraries subscribe to as much content that their users need </div><div>as they can afford to subscribe to.)</div><br class=""><div class="">The only way to make subscriptions cancellable is to first mandate </div><div class="">and provide (universal — not just local) <a href="http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/04/28/inflated-subscriptions-unsustainable-harnad/" class="">Green OA</a>.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">SH</div><div class=""><br class=""></div></body></html>