First things first. Once Green OA self-archiving mandates are adopted
universally by institutions and funders, the planet will have Green OA
(to the refereed final drafts of articles accepted for publication),
at long last, to the enormous benefit of research, researchers, their
institutions, and the public that funds the research, in terms of
research uptake, usage, applications, impact and progress.
As long as subscriptions continue to pay for publication (the print
edition, the online edition, distribution, archiving, and
peer-review/copy-editing), there is no need for any further change.
If and when universal Green OA should eventually make institutional
subscriptions no longer sustainable (because users are satisfied with
the Green OA version, so their institutions cancel their
subscriptions), then publishers will cancel the print edition and
online edition, offload the distribution and archiving to the global
network of Green OA institutional repositories, and charge only for
the peer-review/copy-editing costs. The institutions can and will pay
for that, per paper refereed, out of a fraction of their annual
windfall subscription-cancellation savings.
But we are nowhere near that yet. Most of today's Gold OA fees are not
only much higher than they would be if users were all satisfied with
the Green OA version, but the money to pay for them is still mostly
tied up in journal subscriptions.
That's why all this pre-emptive speculation is irrelevant. The only
thing missing today is OA itself, and universal Green OA mandates will
provide it. After that, publishing will adapt as a matter of natural
course.
Stevan Harnad
Harnad, S. (2009) The PostGutenberg Open Access Journal. In: Cope, B.
& Phillips, A (Eds.) The Future of the Academic Journal. Chandos.
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15617/
On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 7:14 PM, Sandy Thatcher <sgt3_at_psu.edu> wrote:
> My understanding of why many publishers oppose FRPAA and the NIH
> policy is that it mandates the uncompensated appropriation of the
> peer review conducted by publishers. Given the retention of
> rights involved in the agreements that researchers will be
> required to sign, this does not have to raise any copyright
> issues per se. But it does mean that the federal government is
> requiring publishers to pay the cost of peer review if they want
> to continue publishing any articles funded by agency dollars.
>
> Because this involves just Green OA, it remains to be seen
> whether libraries, especially given the pressures on their
> budgets today, will have sufficient incentive to continue
> subscribing to high-priced STM journals they know they can access
> for free after 6 months just for the benefit of the final
> processing that publishers provide.
>
> >From what I have learned over the past several years about how
> little importance people, including even authors, seem to place
> on copyediting, I'm not sanguine that this deal is going to work
> out well for publishers.
>
> In that event, it seems to me that publishers have three choices:
>
> 1)start charging fees to cover the cost of peer review and final
> processing (in effect, becoming Gold OA publishers), 2)
> accepting for publication only articles not funded by
> government, or 3) investing their capital in some more promising
> business. Since FRPPA includes no provision for paying any such
> fees, that burden will fall back upon authors and their
> universities. Under scenarios 2 and 3, government-funded
> research will then need to be peer reviewed in some other way
> than by publishers. Who will provide that service? FRPPA
> requires peer review. If government starts to provide peer
> review, then we are into uncertain territory, with potential
> politicization of the process and variability in funding levels
> from year to year. Professional societies are the logical
> players here, but they are already suffering from financial
> problems and are loath to raise membership fees much higher to
> pay for added services.
>
> FRPAA does not at the moment include the NEH, which funds most
> research in the humanities--when government funding is available
> at all. But as we all know, it funds only a minuscule portion of
> humanities research. If FRPAA is extended to the NEH eventually,
> or if the Executive Branch decides to mandate open access for the
> NEH via executive order, as Peter suggests it might do, I would
> guess that most publishers of humanities journals will either
> begin not to accept NEH-funded articles for review or else
> require special fees for such articles to cover costs of
> peer-reviewing them, in effect instituting hybrid Gold OA.
>
> What does seem perfectly clear is that scholars are going to
> continue needing their articles peer reviewed because only in
> that way can they advance in their careers. If FRPPA does not pay
> for peer review, and publishers decide not to consider articles
> funded by government research, then some mechanism will still
> need to be put in place to have peer review carried out. Has
> anyone given much thought to how that will be accomplished if
> scenarios 2 and 3 comes to pass?
>
> Sandy Thatcher
>
> P.S. Peter says that 60% of publishers now allow "postprints" to
> be posted OA. Is that true? I thought "postprint" meant
> peer-reviewed but not finally processed, but in this newsletter
> he seems to be talking as though "postprints" meant the final
> versions as published. I believe the 60% figure is accurate for
> Green OA. I doubt it is accurate for final versions.
>
>>For the first six months after publication, publishers will have
>>exclusive distribution rights to both the published edition and
>>(at their choice) the final version of the author's
>>peer-reviewed manuscript. After six months, publishers will
>>still have exclusive distribution rights to the published
>>edition, and the only time limit on that exclusivity is the
>>duration of copyright itself (the life of the author plus 70
>>years). Of course, publishers may voluntarily waive some of
>>these exclusive rights by permitting authors to self-archive
>>their postprints, and today more than 60% of surveyed publishers
>>do just that.
>
> At 12:43 PM -0400 5/2/10, Peter Suber wrote:
>>May 2010 issue
>
>><http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/05-02-10.htm>http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/05-02-10.htm
>
>
Received on Wed May 05 2010 - 14:37:18 BST