From: "Hamaker, Charles" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 20 Sep 2013 01:16:44 +0000

My problems with Rick's  suggestion come in what little we know of the
nature of green OA provision. Phil Davis has indicated that
researchers cherry pick their publications, putting their best
articles out as Green OA. See his article in BMJ 2008;337:a568  that
notes: " prestigious articles are more likely to be made freely
accessible." http://www.bmj.com/content/337/bmj.a568   If that is
still true, cancelling on the basis of green OA would mean, yes, the
most cited articles have a fair chance of being readable to Univ. of
Utah researchers. . For a research project, article, review, grant
application etc.  it's not just the top of the pile that gets sorted
through, its the whole thing. So one potential outcome for the U of U
is that Utah will pay MORE for the less cited literature ie. in ILL
and document delivery fees. or researchers will miss it all together.

And even the green OA article has potential issues. What researcher
will be satisfied with the OA version ? They need to cite the final
form of publication, probably why  arXiv has not had an appreciable
impact on subscription rates to High Energy Physics journals. We all
have in that long running example, it seems to me, evidence that green
articles only, are insufficient for researchers citation needs. Even
when the vast majority of a literature is freely available,  high
impact articles will still need citation from the original journal,
and in areas with less green OA participation, lesser impact content
may well not be available at all. What Green OA does is present the
contents of original research, which if the researcher is going to
follow up based on that, focuses on the official end point, the
published article.

Is something missing in my logic?

If so I'd be interested in hearing any and all rebuttals.

I know of no evidence that green OA is a threat to subscription based
journals, and in fact as "free " advertising, probably pushes the
researcher to the original. Increasing the embargo, however has a
potential of harming ultimately, awareness of the very fields whose
literature it is supposedly "guarding".

Green OA apparently does  provide access to the information that may
be critical especially for breaking research areas that need to know
as soon as possible what pothers are doing. Isn't that how its worked
so far in HEP? Or am I mistaken? I'm an advocate of Green OA, it has
obvious advantages for both the author and the reader, the novice and
the expert and should be widely encouraged for many reasons. But I
don't see journal cancellation as one of the logical outcomes.

Rick's suggestion of cancellation based on Green OA availability does
not cut the Gordian Knot  or solve the puzzle of the Minotaur's
labyrinth. There are lots of other reasons and justifications for
cancelling high priced journals, but this isn't one of them.

Chuck