I cannot speak with 100% confidence for Stevan Harnad, but I doubt he
thinks there is any sort of dilemma. He is neither pro or anti journal
publishers; His concern is with access to research materials. if,
perchance, in the long term journals do die because of OA, I suspect his
attitude would be "so be it". It's up to journal publishers to change their
business model to respond to the challenge of OA.
In the short term, repositories will not force a decline in journal
publishing because so little of the research literature is appearing in
repositories. In the longer term, if the publishers do not change their
business model, it probably will cause a decline in their sales. I am
sceptical about the "author pays" OA journal model. My own view is that a
small number of them will thrive, but the bulk of OA will be in
repositories.
The point about generalising from physics to all other topics is
interesting. There ARE risks about generalising too far, but there is
persuasive evidence from other subject areas that OA increases impact and
citations.
Charles
Professor Charles Oppenheim
Department of Information Science
Loughborough University
Loughborough
Leics LE11 3TU
Tel 01509-223065
Fax 01509-223053
e mail [log in to unmask]
----- Original Message -----
From: "J.W.T.Smith" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, September 07, 2005 2:13 PM
Subject: Re: Mandatory Deposit of Published Papers in Repositories
> 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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