From: Stevan Harnad <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2012 11:07:01 -0500

Comments on Richard Poynder's interview of Claudio Aspesi in Open and
Shut: "Scholarly Publishing: Where is Plan B?"

1. Research libraries cannot, need not and will not cancel (important)
journals until all or almost all their contents are freely accessible
to their users by some other means.

2. Boycott-threatening authors cannot, need not and will not stop
publishing in or refereeing for their best journals: It is neither
necessary nor realistic. There are easier and better ways to make
those journals' contents freely accessible.

3. Researchers cannot, need not and will not stop serving on the
editorial boards of their best journals. It is neither necessary nor
realistic. There are easier and better ways to make those journals'
contents freely accessible.

4. Research and researchers cannot, need not and will not abandon peer
review. It is neither necessary nor realistic. There are easier and
better ways to make journals' contents freely accessible.

5. Journals cannot, need not and will not convert to Gold Open Access
publishing today: That would simply make OA as unaffordable as
subscription access (at current prices).

6. What those who are preoccupied with journal pricing and economics
keep overlooking is that the one and only reason it matters so much
that journals are overpriced and unaffordable is that there is no
other way for would-be users to access their contents.

7. Hence only one course of action is realistic, feasible and makes
sense: It will remedy the accessibility problem completely and it will
eventually drive down journal expenses and prices as well as induce a
conversion to Gold OA publishing at an affordable rate.

8. That course of action is for universities and research funders to
mandate Green OA self-archiving.

9. Once Green OA self-archiving becomes universal because it is
universally mandated, the research accessibility problem is solved.

10. Once the research accessibility problem is solved, journal
affordability is no longer a life-or-death matter: libraries can
cancel unaffordable journals because their contents are freely
accessible to their users by some other means.

11. Once post-Green-OA cancellations make subscriptions unsustainable
for meeting publishing costs, publishers will downsize to just the
cost of peer review alone, offloading access provision and archiving
onto institutional OA repositories, and converting to Gold OA
publishing.

12. Universities will then have the funds to pay the much lower costs
of peer review alone out of their windfall subscription cancelation
savings.
(It is this optimal and inevitable outcome for research and
researchers that the publishers' lobby is doing its best to forestall
as long as it possibly can. But it's entirely up to the research
community how long they allow them to do it. As long as they do, it
amounts to allowing the flea on its tail to wag the research/dog…)