Professor Harnad finds himself in a dilemma. He doesn't want to give up
the idea of the traditional journal model (where publication, including
making available and marketing, and certification [reviewing] is performed
by a single organisation called 'the journal') but he does want to bypass
the subscription payment system that current pays for this organisation.
So we have this rearguard argument that self-archiving has not, and will
not, affect the traditional journal model. Of course it will unless there
is a move to the 'open access journal' funded by the 'author pays' model.
I make this assertion as a librarian who has to make decisions based on
growing demands and diminishing funds.
Further, Professor Harnad, in his open letter to RCUK, is arguing from the
specific (physical sciences) to the general (all academia), and specific
to general arguments are notoriously problematic.
Finally, it is still not clear that the 'author pays' model will support
the journal as currently structured and if not I believe we will see a
further disintegration into publication models like my own deconstructed
journal model
http://library.kent.ac.uk/library/papers/jwts/DJpaper.pdf
(often call the 'disaggregated model' in the US). This will be the end of
the journal as we know it with its various functions spread across a range
of quasi-independent actors (archives, overlay/virtual journals,
independent certification agents, etc). This disintegration is an anathema
to Professor Harnad even though it will be a result, in part, of the
self-archiving movement he has promoted.
NB, I am not arguing against the self-archiving/open access movement but
we should not pretend it and the subscription funded traditional journal
can continue to exist side-by-side.
Regards,
John Smith,
The Templeman Library,
University of Kent, UK
On Mon, 5 Sep 2005, Peter Suber wrote:
> [Forwarding from Stevan Harnad, who is not a subscriber. --Peter Suber.]
>
>
> >Date: Mon, 5 Sep 2005 16:42:12 +0100
> >From: Ken Lillywhite, Business Director, Institute of Physics Publishing
> >To: [log in to unmask]
> >
> >Ever since the launch of the physics e-print archive in 1991, authors
> >publishing in IOP Publishing journals have had the choice to post their
> >preprints to the service. However, we do note that article downloads from
> >our site are significantly lower for those journals whose content is
> >substantially replicated in the arXiv repository than for those which are
> >not, after usage statistics have been normalized to take account of
> >journal size.
> >
> >Usage statistics (e.g., ProjectCOUNTER) are now increasingly used as a
> >'value for money' measure in the library community and elsewhere. Clearly,
> >as usage statistics become more commonplace, it would be only natural for
> >cash-strapped librarians to conclude that subscriptions to low-use ?
> >albeit high-quality, peer-reviewed ? journals are no longer necessary. In
> >this situation subscription-based journals published by a learned society
> >such as ourselves would become economically unviable.
>
> This point has already been rebutted in the Open Letter to RCUK:
>
> http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/18-guid.html
> http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/20-guid.html
>
> but here it is again:
>
> (1) This will become a piece of evidence if/when subscriptions -- controlled
> for other time-dependent factors -- decline as a function of self-archiving.
> So far, in 14 years, they have not.
>
> (2) As self-archived content grows, both download data and citation
> data will be pooled. This is in the interests of the author, and the
> author's institution, to ensure that usage and impact of their research
> output is measured and credited. If there are multiple versions of the
> same work, downloads will be pooled, and if multiple versions are cited,
> citations will be pooled. It would be the most natural thing in the world
> to share those pooled download and citation statistics with the journal
> publisher's site, collaboratively (and automatically. The version on
> which the counts should and will converge in any case is the official,
> published version of record, not the various supplements.
>
> (3) Librarians don't cancel on the basis of COUNTER statistics,
> though they take them into account; they cancel on the basis of
> relative suggestions from their faculty, budget-multiple-constraint
> satisfaction. Researchers are not recommending the canceliation of
> good journals (amongst which both the IOPP and APS journals number,
> in physics), regardless of where they access their working copies.
>
> (4) If 14 years of concerted self-archiving in physics have not yet
> hurt the physics publishers, it is even less likely that the RCUK
> self-archiving mandate -- which is equally distributed across *all*
> journals, is based only on the UK fraction of their content, and not
> focussed on physics journals at all -- will have any such effect.
>
> I note also that IOPP is not recommending that physicists stop self-archiving
> because of IOPP's worries about what might or might not result from COUNTER
> statistics. A wise bit of restraint, lest the unfortunate impression be
> given that physics publishing is not done in the interests of physics,
> but vice versa.
>
> The fact is that research publishing will have to adapt to what turns out to be
> best for research in the online age, and not vice versa.
>
> Stevan Harnad
>
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