From: Bill Cohen <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 8:42 AM

There have been recent comments about an institutional membership sold
by a recent OA scholarly publisher start up. Let's call it Publisher
X.

What does this entail and result in?   Who decides on which
memberships to purchase?

An institutional membership is supposed to provide "Y" number of free
OA publications by faculty associated with that library.

Does the library send out emails to all faculty announcing this arrangement?

Or is the arrangement posted on the library's website?

I truly don't know.   Can anyone enlighten & comment?   I don't think
this is beating a dead horse.  With library funding is so tight, I'm
not aware of any research articles exploring/illuminating higher
education policy, planning, advantages, and potential complex ethical
issues in such memberships.

And this does tie into the warnings espoused by "Beall's List" of
questionnable OA pubishers, in that a cross-check should be made
before libraries "buy into" such memberships.

I know of no other consumer watchdog in this area.

Bill Cohen