Having been around long enough to realize it may be impossible to have a
pleasant exchange of views with a 'true believer', I will let Stevan's
less than graceful taunt pass without comment. OA is obviously a
wonderful goal but the best way to reach it should be open for
discussion sans ridicule.
Society publishers have long provided extremely useful assistance to
their authors and their role should be respected in this transition
environment.
One very serious but apparently overlooked concern, regarding
Cornyn-Lieberman, is the scale of payment for Open Access. One suspects
that involving politicians in this process will result in funding
agencies being required to pay publication charges based on publisher
demands, rather than economic reality. The specter of Cornyn-Lieberman
becoming a bail-out for commercial publishers, as suggested by the
recent announcement of the Wellcome Trust-Elsevier agreement, is truly
disheartening.
Thus, the suggestion that a return to reasonable subscription pricing
and modest author contributions is an obviously sensible approach for
the interim, if not the long term.
In regards self-archiving, perhaps the fact that "Caltech has some of
the earliest and most numerous IRs", is due to the fact 1) that it is
not mandated and 2) that it is dependent largely on library staff and
publishers who allow their papers to be posted after a reasonable delay.
Dana L. Roth
Millikan Library / Caltech 1-32
1200 E. California Blvd. Pasadena, CA 91125
626-395-6423 fax 626-792-7540
dzrlib_at_library.caltech.edu
http://library.caltech.edu/collections/chemistry.htm
-----Original Message-----
From: American Scientist Open Access Forum
[mailto:AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG] On
Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
Sent: Monday, October 23, 2006 6:47 PM
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Subject: Re: More thoughts on Impact Factors & Open Access journal
publishing
Dana Roth's posting below takes my breath away: Dana, are you serious?
(I honestly can't tell whether it was posted as a joke!)
On Mon, 23 Oct 2006, Dana Roth wrote:
> "for publicly funded research...
> public access to the information should be taken into account...
> view that means selecting a responsible publisher who strives to make
> the information available at an economical rate, guarantees that the
> publication is truly archival, and doesn't manipulate the market to
> eliminate competition."
>
> This makes excellent sense to me ... especially since the ECS'
> flagship journal ... Journal of the Electrochemical Society published
> 6080 pages last year with only a $761 institutional subscription ...
> yes, less than 13 cents per page ... presumably because they also ask
> for a $75/page charge from their authors. Compare this with the
> typical commercial journal which is priced at over $1/page, albeit
> without author page charges.
>
> The Electrochemical Society approach seems like an excellent
> compromise between 'OA author pays' and 'non-OA library pays' ... and
> this approach is also followed by J. Biol. Chem. and J. Neuroscience
among others ...
>
> http://www.electrochem.org/dl/interface/fal/fal06/fall06_p07.pdf
This is the absolute antithesis of OA and everything it stands for!
It reduces everything to the tired old SPARC goal of trying to get lower
journal prices (except it adds the new twist that this better deal for
libraries should be subsidised by the author!).
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0698.html
But SPARC has since begun to wake from its torpid slumber, and after
several years of ineffectual gold (OA publishing) fever, SPARC has
gotten a half-grip on IRs, and is strongly backing the FRPAA (green) OA
self-archiving mandate:
http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/frpaa/index.html
OA is about providing free online access to all users, to maximise
research usage and impact, not about minimising subscription costs for
libraries.
And what is needed is not a "compromise between 'OA author pays' and
'non-OA library pays'. What is needed is OA: 100% OA. And the way to get
that is via self-archiving. And the way to get 100% self-archiving is
for institutions and funders to mandate it (as the FRPAA is proposing,
and as 6 funders and 7 institutions have already done).
http://www.eprints.org/signup/fulllist.php
I realise librarians can't mandate self-archiving -- but they can help,
if they can get their minds off journal prices long enough to make the
case to their provosts! Eloy Rodrigues succeeded in Portugal (U Minho),
and in Australia it was QUT's pro-vice-chancellor who proposed the
mandate and the brilliant work of librarian Paula Callan that helped
make it work. Same thing at CERN.
Cal Tech has some of the earliest and most numerous IRs. Isn't it time
it now mandated that its researchers fill them?
http://archives.eprints.org/?action=search&query=caltech&submit=Search
Stevan Harnad
Received on Thu Oct 26 2006 - 02:08:11 BST