From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2012 20:55:07 -0400
Jan,
About the "anglo-linguism," do you see this as a matter of choice or a
function of network effects and the law of increasing returns?
Joe Esposito
On Wed, Aug 8, 2012 at 3:30 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> From: Jan Velterop <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2012 09:43:24 +0200
>
> On 6 Aug 2012, at 03:34, LIBLICENSE wrote:
>
>> From: "Andrew A. Adams" <[log in to unmask]>
>> Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2012 10:08:54 +0900
>>
>> There
>> are on the order of 10,000 research instutitions and more than ten times as
>> many journals. Persudaing 10,000 institutions to adopt OA deposit mandates
>> seems to me a quicker and more certain route to obtain OA than persuading
>> 100,000 journals to go Gold (and finding more money to bribe them into it, it
>> would appear - money which is going to continue to be demanded by them in
>> perpetuity, not accepted as a transitional fee - there's nothing so permanent
>> as a temporary measure).
>
> 10,000 research institutes means, in terms of 'green', 10,000
> repositories; 100,000 journals (if there were so many; I've only ever
> heard numbers in the order of 20-25,000) does not mean 100,000
> publishers. Besides, there is no existential reason for institutions
> to have a repository and 'green' mandate. The fact that others have
> repositories and it doesn't have one itself does not harm a research
> institution in the same way that not having being 'gold' (or at least
> having a 'gold' option) does existentially harm journals in an
> environment of more and more 'gold' journals.
>
> As for costs, there are two things that seem to escape the attention
> of exclusively 'green' advocates:
>
> 1) 'Green' fully depends on the prolongation of the subscription
> model. Without subscription revenues no journals, hence no
> peer-reviewed articles, hence nothing to self-archive but manuscripts,
> arXiv-style. (That would be fine by me, actually, with
> post-publication peer review mechanisms overlaying arXiv-oids). The
> cost of maintaining subscriptions is completely ignored by exclusively
> 'green' advocates, who always talk about 'green' costing next to
> nothing. They are talking about the *marginal* cost of 'green', and
> compare it to the *integral* cost of 'gold'.
>
> 2) Exclusively 'green' advocates do not seem to understand that for
> 'gold' journals, publishers are not in any position to "demand money".
> They can only offer their services in exchange for a fee if those who
> would pay the fee are willing to pay it. That's known as
> 'competition', or as a 'functioning market'. By its very nature, it
> drives down prices. This in contrast to the monopoloid subscription
> market, where the price drivers face upwards. Sure, some APC's
> increased since the early beginnings of 'gold' OA publishing, when
> 'gold' publishers found out they couldn't do it for amounts below
> their costs. But generally, the average APCs per 'gold' article are
> lower — much lower — than the average publisher revenues per
> subscription article. And this average per-article subscription price
> will have to be coughed up in order to keep 'green' afloat.
>
> If and when the denizens of the ivory tower were to reduce their
> culturalism and anglo-linguism that currently prevails, we could
> rapidly see science publishing emerge in places like China, India, and
> other countries keen on establishing their place in a global market,
> competing on price. APCs could tumble. Some call this 'predatory gold
> OA publishing'. Few realise that the 'prey' is subscription journals.
[SNIP]
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