From: Stevan Harnad <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2012 22:49:42 -0400
On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 9:31 PM, Subbiah Arunachalam
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Please see the Economist debate on academic journals [http://www.economist.com/economist-asks/do-fee-charging-academic-journals-offer-value-added-0?sort=2#sort-comments.
> It has not attracted many comments from readers - a clear indication that the general public (at least the segment that reads high quality news channels like The Economist) is least interested in, if not indifferent to, what we consider is of paramount importance. All our advocacy has not reached them. I think, instead of spending our time talking about refining and redefining the most appropriate way to bring about universal open access amongst ourselves (and that too with some amount of rancour) we should devote our attention now to take the message to the citizenry at large. We should promote Students for OA, Alliance of Taxpayers for OA and similar initiatives in a large scale. In the end, public awareness and taxpayer acceptance are the keys to the success of the OA movement.
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CONFLATING SUBSCRIPTION FEES AND (GOLD) OPEN ACCESS PUBLICATION FEES -
AND MISSING THE POINT
The Economist is mixing up two kinds of fees: subscription fees,
charged by journals to users' institutions in exchange for access and
publication fees, charged by (some) journal to authors' institutions
in exchange for providing free online access ("open access") to all
users.
Yes, subscriptions overcharge enormously; so do open-access journals
("gold open access"). But there is another way for authors to provide
free online access to their journal articles for all users whose
institutions cannot afford subscription access: authors can
self-archive the final, peer-reviewed draft in their open-access
institutional repositories as soon as they are accepted for
publication ("green open access").
Researchers' funders and institutions have begun mandating (requiring)
green open access self-archiving, but publishers have been lobbying
vehemently that they should instead be paid even more for "hybrid gold
open access," which is when a journal continues to collect
subscriptions but, in addition, sells gold open access to individual
authors who agree to pay a publication fee (which can be from $1500 to
$3000 or more per paper published).
But now the UK research funder (RCUK), which used to be the worldwide
leader in open access policy has been persuaded by the publisher lobby
(as well as gold open access advocates) to mandate Gold OA payment,
paid for out of scarce research funds, in place of RCUK's historic
green cost-free Green OA self-archiving.
The UK and global research community must now send RCUK a very
powerful and concerted signal that this needless and wasteful new
policy must be revised.
See:
Urgent Need to Revise the New RCUK Open Access Policy
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/927-.html
How and Why the RCUK Open Access Policy Needs to Be Revised
(Digital Research 2012 Keynote, Oxford, September 11)
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/926-.html
How to Repair the New RCUK OA Policy
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/923-.html
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