From: Dan Scott <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2012 13:47:47 +0000

I thought the video was engaging and had good visual impact. I liked the
animation.

I disagree somewhat with Sandy's views. The increase in submitted output was
ruthlessly exploited by publishers: firstly, by hiking prices of existing
journals to disproportionate levels; secondly, by using the advent of online
databases to produce more and more journals, which may or may not be of high
quality. Bulking up the overall journal numbers allowed publishers to charge
ever-higher prices on the basis that there was extra content; and thirdly,
annual percentage increases are often way above inflation. There are other
things wrong within scholarly publishing that contribute to the situation we
are in (such as the conflation between journal citations and research
funding), but in the case of pricing I think the traditional publishers are
the main culprits.

I've worked with libraries all over the world and under-funding has never
been a major complaint; rather, that budgets will simply never keep pace
with the insatiable demands of subscriptions.

I agree that article processing charges that are set too high risk becoming
barriers in their own right.

DAN SCOTT

-----Original Message-----
From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2012 15:01:48 -0500

A useful video to explain the basics of open access to people who haven't
heard about it before, but as a publisher I naturally find that it
oversimplifies some important points. E.g., it implies that publishers alone
are to blame for the increasing costs (and hence
prices) of publishing scientific articles, without mentioning anywhere the
rate of increase in the production of articles by scientists who want to get
them published and the reaction by publishers to launch new journals and
expand the size of already existing ones.  Nor does it mention the practice
of universities underfunding both their libraries and their own presses
(while they are happy to spend lots more on football and basketball teams).

The question of how taxpayer-funded research can best be disseminated in
unrestricted form is never addressed either, such as the longstanding
proposal to require that all researchers be required to submit final reports
and that those reports be made freely available immediately upon submission.
And while it acknowledges that publishing costs money, there is no
acknowledgment that OA approaches may exacerbate some problems--like drawing
money out of research funding to support article publication charges--while
ameliorating others.  Hence I would hardly call this video a balanced
presentation.

Sandy Thatcher


> From: Ken Masters <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2012 19:46:06 +0400
>
> Hi All
>
> You might find this recent video on Open Access interesting:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=L5rVH1KGBCY#!
>
> Regards
>
> Ken
>
> Dr. Ken Masters
> Asst. Professor: Medical Informatics
> Medical Education Unit
> College of Medicine & Health Sciences
> Sultan Qaboos University
> Sultanate of Oman