Your research sounds very interesting, Arif, and I look forward to
seeing your results. Some comments below, on the significances
question.
On 15-Jan-10, at 1:34 PM, Arif Jinha wrote:
Significances?
It may be possible in the future to develop an index that would tell
librarians at any institution in the world what portion and quantity of
global annual research would be available to their researchers without
subscription, what portion/quantity would be available with their
subscriptions and concession programs, and perhaps even what access they
have to older literature, or indeed what access they have as a portion
of
all journal research that exists. And of course, how they obtain
access to
what they need, and how they can contribute to improving access for all.
Comments (Heather):
Librarians at many institutions are already connecting people with
open access, for example by including DOAJ in their journal lists and/
or catalogues, and by directing searchers to open access
repositories. There is already many more titles (over 4,000 fully
open access peer-reviewed journals) in DOAJ alone than in many library
paid subscription packages. Compare, for example, the over 4,000
titles of DOAJ with the about 2,000 titles in the world's largest
publisher package, Science Direct. (Not that the number of articles
is necessarily comparable, not something I have investigated). The
issue here is not so much building to a critical mass, but rather
raising awareness. This is one of the reasons I write my Dramatic
Growth of Open Access series. The growth of OA truly is amazing.
I've always been a very optimistic OA advocate, but even I am
continually floored by how fast the growth is.
How libraries can contribute to improving access for all: many
libraries are currently very involved in scholarly communication
programs, providing education for scholars on author's rights (no one
needs to sign away copyright in order to publish), managing
institutional repositories, assisting with compliance with funding
agency OA policies, and many also provide journal hosting and support
services for faculty, and working to transition funding from the
subscriptions system to open access, for example by joining the
Compact on Open Access Publishing Equity (COPE):
http://www.oacompact.org/compact/
Arif again:
This could also indicate to policymakers and advocates where the tipping
point may be in the future, in terms of the impact of the OA portion
on the
vision of a truly open global system of research communication, what
decisions libraries can take with regard to managing the cost of
subscriptions, for journals in terms of deciding on a revenue model,
and for
policymakers in terms of mandates. For instance, if in 2006 we have
almost
20% of global literature accessible gratis, what kind of 'game-changer'
might there be when that number approaches 50%? Is there a plateau to
this
trend?
Comments (Heather)
There isn't really ONE tipping point for OA, but rather many (Peter
Suber wrote about this some time ago). There is no longer a need to
advocate for OA as a good thing, for example; the arguments now relate
to feasibility, not desirability. Similarly, the fact that there are
profitable OA publishers and many successful OA publishers with a
variety of business models has proven the point that OA is feasible
from a business perspective, a tipping point that made one old
argument simply go away.
best,
Heather Morrison, MLIS
PhD Student, SFU School of Communication
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com
Received on Sat Jan 16 2010 - 03:31:38 GMT