From: Richard Poynder <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2012 15:55:02 +0100
An interview with Graham Taylor, Director of Educational, Academic and
Professional Publishing at the UK-based Publishers Association.
Some extracts below.
* On whether the Finch Committee (made up of funders, learned societies,
libraries, research institutions and publishers) succumbed to publisher
lobbying, as some have claimed:
“I find it strange that publisher representatives tend to be described as a
‘lobby’. What description is appropriate for the other delegates?”
* On whether the Finch recommendations might encourage publishers to
“double dip”, by charging both article-processing charges and subscriptions
for their Hybrid OA journals:
“6% of global research outputs derive from the UK, but if that is funded by
APCs then the UK alone must cover that cost, which was previously spread over
global subscriptions. Since the UK is a net exporter of research outputs, if we
fund our own then the cost to the UK must rise, albeit quite modestly.
“To apply the term ‘double dipping’ to this effect is a pejorative way of
describing the hybrid journals with which most publishers now experiment. The
APC element in these journals is still relatively low, less than 5%, but if the
Finch recommendations are adopted in other jurisdictions this proportion will
rise and over time the cost of subscriptions will fall.”
* On whether OA publishing will be less costly than subscription publishing:
“Probably not. All publishing has costs, and the sunk, fixed, and platform
costs associated with an effective publishing operation of a quality that the
market expects will still be there, only the marginal and variable costs will
change and supply side funding will bring its own costs as well.”
On Green OA and embargoes:
“The so-called ‘Green’ route to OA is entirely derivative of publishing
costs being recovered elsewhere. We are very firmly of the belief that a
minimum 12 month embargo is needed, and in some subjects such as mathematics
probably longer. The ‘half lives’ of article downloads after publication
make this very clear. How can Green operate at all if there is no viable means
left to fund the original publication and peer review?
“We are not opposed to Green, but we are opposed to the imposition of short
embargoes when the funder is not prepared to fund APCs.”
* On the infamous Daily Mail article that was published on the day the Finch
Report was released, and which predicted that the Finch Report could destroy a
£1billion industry employing 10,000 people. In making the claim the article
cited a “leading publishing group”, causing OA advocates to conclude that
the article had been deliberately “placed” by the publishing industry:
“Why pick on this hilariously misinformed and one-eyed piece of journalism
(‘a report commissioned by No 10 Downing Street sociologist Janet Finch’)
among all the other coverage of Finch? I was still on holiday at the time so it
certainly wasn’t me, and everyone I know has denied all knowledge.
“Perhaps someone close to the review group did not like the conclusions and
wanted to work a spoiler. Perhaps we should not believe all we read in the
papers. I don’t think it made a fig of difference other than to discredit the
organ involved. We used to wrap our chips in this kind of thing, now
unfortunately it stays on the record.”
More here:
http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/uk-publishers-association-comments-on.html
--
Richard Poynder
www.richardpoynder.co.uk
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