Re: Draft letter for institutions to sign to implement Berlin Declaration

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 13:38:34 +0000

On Fri, 26 Dec 2003, Alexei Koudinov wrote:

> [W]hy... institutionalize "open access" journal[s] as [those] that
> (proposed item 8) "recover costs by charging the author-institution for
> each outgoing article they publish" [?]
>
> Such journals' operation may well be supported by small grants...

Item (8) can be modified to change it from its present wording:

    (8) New "open-access" journals can recover their costs by charging the
    author-institution for each outgoing article they publish, instead of
    charging the user-institution for each journal or article they access.

to

    (8) New "open-access" journals can recover their costs other than
    by charging the user-institution for each journal or article they
    access, as toll-access journals do (e.g., by instead charging the
    author-institution for each outgoing article they publish).

There is no need to specify the possibility of subsidy and volunteerism.
Subsidy and volunteerism are possibilities for supporting anything;
sustaining them as a stable long-term basis for open-access journal
publishing is another matter. See, for example, the history of the Journal
of High Energy Physics (JHEP), which started as a subsidized open-access
journal and then had to revert to toll-access to cover its costs:

    "JHEP will convert from toll-free-access to toll-based access"
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1812.html

Stevan Harnad

NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open
access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at
the American Scientist Open Access Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01 & 02 & 03):
    http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html
    Post discussion to: american-scientist-open-access-forum_at_amsci.org

Unified Dual Open-Access-Provision Policy:
    BOAI-2 ("gold"): Publish your article in a suitable open-access
            journal whenever one exists.
            http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#journals
    BOAI-1 ("green"): Otherwise, publish your article in a suitable
            toll-access journal and also self-archive it.
            http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/
    http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml
    http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php
Received on Fri Dec 26 2003 - 13:38:34 GMT

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