From: Rick Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2013 14:14:23 +0000

>My problems with Rick's  suggestion come in what little we know of the
>nature of green OA provision. Phil Davis has indicated that
>researchers cherry pick their publications, putting their best
>articles out as Green OA. See his article in BMJ 2008;337:a568  that
>notes: " prestigious articles are more likely to be made freely
>accessible." http://www.bmj.com/content/337/bmj.a568   If that is
>still true, cancelling on the basis of green OA would mean, yes, the
>most cited articles have a fair chance of being readable to Univ. of
>Utah researchers. . For a research project, article, review, grant
>application etc.  it's not just the top of the pile that gets sorted
>through, its the whole thing. So one potential outcome for the U of U
>is that Utah will pay MORE for the less cited literature ie. in ILL
>and document delivery fees. or researchers will miss it all together.

I apologize, but I'm having a hard time following the thread of this
paragraph. I think the upshot is that canceling a Green journal might lead
the library to pay more in per-article transaction fees than it would have
for the subscription -- is that correct? If so, then in such a case the
library should probably reinstate the subscription.

>And even the green OA article has potential issues. What researcher
>will be satisfied with the OA version?

That's a good point -- but unfortunately, librarians have never been (and
never will be) able to make all researchers equally satisfied. We have to
treat some of them preferentially. How that treatment is distributed will
(or should) be determined by the priorities of the library's sponsoring
institution. So at my university, for example, we have to give physicists
more support than we give to researchers studying Latin American
literature. This means that if Latin American literature journals and
high-energy physics journals go Green at similar rates (and if our budgets
remain flat relative to STM price increases), we'll probably start
canceling Latin American literature journals in order to maintain access
to the physics journals, despite the dissatisfaction this causes among our
Latin American lit scholars. And as the budget/price trends continue,
we'll eventually start canceling some of the Green physics journals in
order to maintain subscriptions to the non-Green ones, despite the
dissatisfaction of the physics researchers. We don't have the option of
making everyone equally happy.

>They need to cite the final
>form of publication, probably why arXiv has not had an appreciable
>impact on subscription rates to High Energy Physics journals.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think what usually goes to the arXiv
is the same thing as what gets deposited under most Green mandates. As I
understand it, Green OA is generally about authors' final versions. The
arXiv generally deals in more preliminary versions, which I believe would
largely account for the arXiv's relatively low impact on subscription
rates. Even more significant, though, is the centrality of high-energy
physics journals to the research mission of so many universities. As I've
said before, journals that are centrally important are relatively unlikely
to be canceled even if they go 100% Green. It's the ones on the margins
that would be under greater threat. But that means lots and lots of
journals.

>I know of no evidence that green OA is a threat to subscription based
>journals, and in fact as "free " advertising, probably pushes the
>researcher to the original.

Well, it's notoriously difficult to collect data about things that haven't
happened yet. Until we see truly pervasive adoption of Green policies,
there won't be any direct evidence of the impact of pervasive adoption of
Green policies. In the meantime, we do have common sense, which says that
it's pretty hard to give away content for free and continue selling it at
the same time. (Bear in mind that giving away your content is not the same
thing as advertising it. And giving away free samples only enhances sales
when the samples are small and access to them is limited.) The other thing
we do have is this study from ALPSP last year: http://bit.ly/16TPU7L. It's
not the same thing as direct evidence, but I think it's pretty strongly
suggestive.


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