Misconception: Articles are a 'product', presented as a 'gift' to
publishers.
Though the difference between 'product' and 'service' is somewhat
artificial (some speak of a 'service product'), what publishers have
provided has always been a 'service'. The service consisted - and still
consists - of arranging all that's necessary to make a scientifically
non-recognised piece of work (pretty much 'worthless' for the scientific
establishment), into a scientifically recognised addition to the
knowledge pool (a valuable piece of work, identifiable as such by the
fact that it is formally published in a peer-reviewed journal).
For the purpose of communicating information it may be good enough, but
for the purpose of constituting the scientific record what the author
delivers is only raw material, at best a semi-product, an intermediate
good.
The author doesn't 'give' anything to a publisher, but instead, asks for
a service. Stevan thinks that such a service should be delivered at
vastly reduced costs. He is most welcome to set up as a publisher and do
just that. But he doesn't want to take the risk that's associated with
setting up such a service, so he tries to off-load any risk to the
existing publishers by getting politicians to mandate subversion
(
http://www.arl.org/sc/subversive/).
OA publishers offer the service he seeks. Authors have by now a wide
range of journals with OA to choose to submit to. What is he waiting
for? Authors' uptake. We all do.
Jan Velterop
> -----Original Message-----
> From: SPARC Open Access Forum [mailto:SPARC-OAForum_at_arl.org]
> On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
> Sent: 28 February 2007 04:09
> To: SPARC Open Access Forum
> Subject: [SOAF] Reply to Jan Velterop, and a Challenge to
> "OA" Publishers Who Oppose Mandating OA via Self-Archiving
>
> ** Cross-Posted **
>
[cut]
>
> I happen to think that this will conflict-of-interest will
> only sort itself out if and when what used to be a product --
> a peer-reviewed, published journal article, online or on
> paper -- ceases to be a product at all (or at least a
> publisher's product), sold to the user-institution, and
> becomes instead a service (the 3rd-party management of peer
> review, and the certification of its outcome), provided by
> the publisher to the author's institution and funder.
>
> http://www.arl.org/sc/subversive/
>
> I also happen to think that only Green OA mandates can drive
> this transition from the current subscription-based
> cost-recovery model to the publication service-fee-based
> model, with the distributed network of institutional OA
> repositories making it possible for journals to offload all
> their current access-provision and archiving burden and its
> costs onto the repositories, distributed worldwide, thereby
> allowing journals to cut publication costs and downsize to
> become providers of the peer-review service alone, with its
> reduced cost recovered via institutional publication fees
> paid out of the institutional subscription-cancellation savings.
>
[cut]
Received on Wed Feb 28 2007 - 19:15:26 GMT