From: Rick Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2013 03:44:25 +0000

>Assuming you don't get a campus wide
>revolt at the library telling faculty, researchers and students that
>the "free OA Green" is good enough ( a huge assumption)

But Chuck, in the scenario I proposed, the library wouldn't be telling
_anyone_ what is or isn't good enough. In fact, exactly the opposite: the
library would be asking the requestor to say whether or not s/he considers
the Green version to be good enough in the case of that specific request.
The fact that libraries have never asked such a question before (but
instead have always striven to provide fast access to the published
version) is supremely irrelevant; the question couldn't have been asked
before, because Green OA didn't exist before. Now that a) our budgets are
far tighter than they once were and b) Green versions are becoming
increasingly available, it makes increasing sense to me to ask the
question, if we can do so in a reasonably unobtrusive and low-impact way.

>if enough
>libraries follow Rick's lead and start cancelling titles that are
>Green OA, what happens next? Does the journal go out of business
>because its base of subscribers disappears? Likely scenario? Does the
>publisher put the screws on Green OA? Another likely scenari?.
>Libraries try to re-subscribe.
>
>Does the journal still exist, and can you get the backfiles? hmm?
>
>I wonder what Rick thinks the outcome of his scenario might be?

I do, in fact, believe that to the degree Green OA becomes pervasive and
library budgets continue to tighten, there will be journals that go out of
business. I see this as a serious problem for the future of Green OA: it
is essentially parasitic on a publishing model that, by its nature, it
also undermines. Green OA eats its host. One response to this danger
is to say to libraries "You must keep paying subscription fees for the
Good of the Order, despite the fact that a reasonable facsimile of the content
for which you're paying is increasingly available for free." Some libraries
will do so, and some won't. And as journal prices keep rising and library
budgets keep staying flat, leaving libraries with no choice but to cut
some of their subscriptions, it seems very likely to me that a journal
whose content is substantially Green (especially if it's more marginal to
the library's research interests) is more likely to be cut than one whose
content is not Green at all (especially if it's more central to the
library's research interests). To say that this won't happen because it
shouldn't happen (or, more disturbingly, to say that people shouldn't talk
about it because talking about it is not good for OA) strikes me as deeply
ill-advised.


Rick Anderson
Assoc. Dean for Scholarly Resources & Collections
Marriott Library, University of Utah
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