Stevan Harnad wrote:
> increased impact made possible by free access; the other part would
> come from Universities' mounting Open Archives, rewarding their
> researchers for self-archiving in them, and even providing proxies
> (students or digitial library staff) to do the first wave of
> self-archiving for them: http://eprints.org
Some of the cost of establishing these archives might be met by universities
diverting the additional cost currently being charged by journal publishers for
access to the electronic equivalents.
University libraries in the UK are currently negotiating with academic journal
publishers for access to online journals. Typically, we are being asked to pay
an additional price, which may be a percentage of what we pay for the print
journals we take, and frequently that additional price gives access to the
entire online journal corpus of a publisher. In certain deals, publishers
promise to increase this new price by no more than a given percentage for
inflation each year (normally at a rate still way above average inflation). We
are advised that the premium for the electronic access is justifiable because
we gain access, often, to a much larger number of journals (though the fact is
that we probably don't want many of them). Some publishers now actively
encourage us to cancel our print titles, provided that we continue to pay the
publisher at a price which was set in the (passing) print era. Only very slight
discounts are available for making such cancellations however (since the
electronic equivalents are still available). This tactic is probably not
surprising: cancelling print reduces a publisher's costs, but providing access
to an electronic subset would be costlier for them than continuing to offer the
entire corpus. Reducing their print/distribution costs while preserving
customer revenue provides them with a win/win.
Stevan once described print journal publishing as a 'house of cards'. It was
easier to understand publishers' reasons, in a print-only world, for adding on
more and more cost to this house as each new storey was added. The profit
motive was in this case accompanied by increased real costs to the publisher of
print and distribution. But in a world of ejournal publication, we are left
with only a very naked profit motive behind the high and increasing charges,
which makes the absurdity of universities buying back their own researchers'
work clearer than ever. As I understand it, the 'subversive proposal' would
result in print journals disappearing (eventually), the house of cards
tumbling, and the cost tumbling commensurately - not quite to zero, of course,
because publishing has costs which are not related to printing and
distribution. What certain publishers are doing, however, is removing the house
of cards, but leaving the price tag somehow hanging in the air, with a strategy
for raising it each year despite the absence of the house! But the house has no
cards, as the emperor has no clothes. We're being sold fresh air. We can't
blame commercial publishers for behaving with commercial logic, but we can
blame ourselves for becoming its victim.
In the face of such a strategy from the commercial world, the Open Archiving
initiative may be one of the few ways that we can begin to shift these costs in
the opposite direction. If libraries were to revert to print-only
subscriptions, saving their add-on cost for access to the e-corpus, that should
realise a saving which could help establish open archives, run promotional and
awareness campaigns with academic staff, pay for staff to do the necessary work
of self-archiving, etc. That could ramp up the pressure on publishers to move
to e-only publishing while *reducing* costs. To work, it would require
libraries to begin to cut print subscriptions too, which would be painful. One
way of easing the pain may be to switch to article delivery services as a
substitute for less heavily used print journals.
I feel that we librarians need to take concerted action now, because by signing
up to deals like this we run the risk of all losing the battle.
John
------------
John MacColl
Sub-Librarian, Online Services
http://www.lib.ed.ac.uk
SELLIC Director
http://www.sellic.ed.ac.uk
Science & Engineering Library, Learning & Information Centre
University of Edinburgh Tel: 0131 650 7275
Darwin Library Mobile: 07808 170075
The King's Buildings Fax: 0131 650 6702
Edinburgh EH9 3JU john.maccoll_at_ed.ac.uk
------------
John MacColl
Sub-Librarian, Online Services
http://www.lib.ed.ac.uk
SELLIC Director
http://www.sellic.ed.ac.uk
Science & Engineering Library, Learning & Information Centre
University of Edinburgh Tel: 0131 650 7275
Darwin Library Mobile: 07808 170075
The King's Buildings Fax: 0131 650 6702
Edinburgh EH9 3JU john.maccoll_at_ed.ac.uk
Received on Mon Jan 24 2000 - 19:17:43 GMT