From: "Guédon Jean-Claude" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:42:04 -0400

There are indeed important differences between OA economic regimes on
the Gold road (the Green road is entirely different in this regard as
it is fully subsidized by institutions that support depositories).
However, Jo Esposito's elaboration, after starting in the right
direction, veers off into irrelevance questions for the issue at hand:
while it is true that knowing who foots the bill is important, the
embargo issue refers to a second order issue at best, the
commercialization aspect is a third order issue, etc.

Remember the basic rules:

1. Research, viewed in its entirety, necessarily includes a publishing
phase; therefore, publishing is an integral part of research;

2. Research (as distinguished from development), i.e. fundamental
research, is financed in great majority by governments, even in the
USA;

3. Research has no other business plan than subsidies. In other words,
although it has been financially viable for several centuries, it has
never been sustainable in the business sense of the word.

Conclusion:

1. Do not ask of scientific publishing to be more sustainable than research;

2. Support all scientific publishing by public subsidies;

3. Place all scientific publishing on an internationalized system of
subsidies to ensure editorial autonomy.

Any system of OA publishing that is not free to readers and to
authors, and that does not allow re-use, mixing, redistribution, etc.,
automatically recreates the very forms of discrimination that OA is
supposed to remove.

Jean-Claude Guédon


-----Original Message-----
From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2013 22:11:59 -0400

I did understand you, David.  And, yes, people disagree.  While the
"rainbow of colors" for OA is silly--the important question is who is
footing the bill--there are important differences between OA regimes
where there is an embargo, where there is no embargo, whether the
material can be commercialized for third parties, etc.  For example,
take a look at what has been made public about PeerJ.  It's clear that
PeerJ has a complex model, which is hard to understand if it is simply
thought of as OA.

Joe Esposito


On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 7:32 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> From: David Prosser <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2013 10:20:52 +0100
>
> I'm afraid that Joe has rather missed the point.  Of course all
> businesses need to look at their revenues streams.  And of course,
> although this point is sometimes ignored, most 'subscription' journals
> have existed on a mixture of revenue streams for many, many decades
> (albeit with subscriptions often being the major revenue component).
>
> The question is not whether publishers need to look at granularity
> when writing their business plans - of course they do.  It was whether
> or not when talking about different types of OA we need a rainbow of
> colours to describe the different business models.  I think no, others
> disagree.
>
> David
>
>
>
> On 22 Apr 2013, at 01:04, LIBLICENSE wrote:
>
> From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2013 20:44:57 -0400
>
> I don't know what your business experience is, David, but the first
> step in analyzing any publishing business, journals included,is to
> parse all the revenue streams. No one publishes journals--no one has
> ever published journals.  Publishers invest in IP and then find the
> best way to exploit that IP.  Successful publishers find multiple ways
> to exploit that IP.  A journal is a manifestation of that underlying
> IP.
>
> Concerning a taxonomy for OA, I have no dog in the hunt.  But if you
> say that the granularity of the analysis for traditional materials is
> unnecessary, you will be missing out on the nature of the enterprise,
> and leaving money on the table to boot.
>
> Joe Esposito