From: Robert Glushko <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2015 14:44:35 +0000

I totally take your 'take a swing comment' in the humorous spirit in
which I believe it was intended, but it does on some level make me a
bit sad.

I'd like to think that nearly all of us are doing what we do because
we love the academy, we love scholarship, and on some level we want to
make the world a better place.  I hope that when we deal with one
another we can keep in mind that publishers/libraries/scholarly
societies are close relatives.  And while like all families we can
duke it out over the dinner table, we are at the end of the day
family.  There are PLENTY of constituencies out there with whom we
have deeper disagreements than with each other.  I'm reminded of the
adage that we often judge ourselves by our intentions and others by
their actions; perhaps we should bring empathy to the discussion.

I'm hopeful that we can work to find common areas of interest, and
that we can all work together to promote those areas.  At our best, we
do so much good.  At our worst, our disagreements seem almost
sectarian.  If there are any fellow travelers on the list who share
this viewpoint, I'd love to talk.

Best,

Bobby Glushko
Head, Scholarly Communications and Copyright
University of Toronto Libraries



-----Original Message-----
From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 7 Jul 2015 21:51:49 -0400

I don't want to get into the middle of this ongoing dialogue between
Kevin Smith and Alicia Wise--though I will say that the persistent
politeness is truly surreal.  Really, guys, take a swing at one
another. We know you want to!

Kevin, however, makes a remark that seems wrong to me.  I don't mean
wrong in the sense of factually incorrect, but wrong in the sense that
when we look at all those arrows pointing to the future, which one is
likely to emerge as the winner? The tragic thing about this game is
that we will all be long gone ourselves before the results come in.
So we are prophets without a prayer.  This is not as bad as it sounds,
inasmuch as, paraphrasing Bob Dole's comment about the Vice
Presidency, it's an indoor job and requires no heavy lifting.

It's the remark about subscriptions that just doesn't seem right to
me.  Everywhere you look in media businesses today, subscriptions are
surging.  The subscriptions can be HBO, Netflix, Oyster, Scribd,
Audible--this list can go on until it tries the patience of our
esteemed moderator.  Meanwhile, even in the tiny little patch of
scholarly communications, the revenue earned from subscriptions
continues to rise year over year.  The growth may not be what was once
promised to Wall Street a decade ago, but there is no evidence that
the economic model or the organizations that are built upon that model
are fading into irrelevance. Indeed, one of the more intriguing
projects I have been involved with the past year applies the
subscription model to a variant of Gold open access.  PeerJ's
membership model is yet another flavor of this model.

It doesn't matter if Kevin or Alicia or anyone else agrees with me or
not. All this happens independently of ourselves. The economy is
impersonal, human agency is overrated. But it is fun to go to the
track and bet on the horses.  Here's $2 on the subscription model to
win, and another $2 for Gold OA to place.  Green OA, alas, ends up
outside the money.

Joe Esposito



On Tue, Jul 7, 2015 at 9:05 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: Kevin Smith <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Tue, 7 Jul 2015 12:07:36 +0000
>
> Dear Alicia,
>
> Thank you for the additional information.  The reason I think this is
> one factor among several that make Elsevier's new policy more complex
> and probably unworkable is that these differing embargo lists mean
> that repository managers will need to determine the nationality of all
> authors on any given paper and then consult the correct embargo list.
> Since this applies at the article level, U.S. repositories will
> undoubtedly need to apply both lists in determining appropriate
> embargoes for any paper authored by scholars from both countries.  It
> even raises the question of who is a U.K. author; is it a U.K. citizen
> (regardless of where they work), someone who lives in the U.K.
> (regardless of nationality or place of employment), a person employed
> by a U.K. institution, or a researcher who is funded by a U.K. body?
>
> We also must agree to disagree, I think, about the continuing role of
> the subscription model.  In my opinion, one of the most urgent tasks
> for libraries is to find ways to transition their collection funds
> from supporting the consumption of scholarship (through subscriptions)
> to supporting its production (where the result will usually be some
> type of open access).  Many libraries are working on this transition as I write.
> Subscription business models were an appropriate response to the
> limitations of print technology, but they are rapidly becoming
> unnecessary and even counterproductive, since by their nature they
> disable the most innovative features of the new environment for
> scholarship.  It seems likely, to me, that subscriptions per se will
> have only a minor role in library collecting in the future, and
> expensive subscription conglomerates like Elsevier probably none.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Kevin
>
> Kevin L. Smith, M.L.S., J.D.
> Director of Copyright and Scholarly Communications Duke University
> Libraries [log in to unmask]