From: Rick Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2013 02:13:27 +0000

>I often wonder what would happen if one of the big journal publishers
>switched to Freemium Access and made all their journal articles free
>to read online and restricted downloads and other tools and services
>to subscribers. Authors/funders could still opt to pay the publisher
>for Gold OA to enable free downloading and access to tools (like
>citation tools). I guess the key question is this: would librarians be
>more likely to cancel a Freemium Access journal than a Green OA
>journal?

That's an interesting thought. The answer, I think, is that it depends on
what is offered for free and what isn't -- as well as, again, how central
the journal is to the library's users' needs. I can imagine MIT settling
for free, read-only access to a literature journal but paying for premium,
download-enabled access to a physics journal, and Kenyon College doing the
opposite. As with Green OA, the library's likelihood of paying for premium
access to any particular title would decrease as its budget gets tighter
and the price of the journal rises.

---
Rick Anderson
Assoc. Dean for Scholarly Resources & Collections
Marriott Library, University of Utah
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