From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2017 14:47:42 -0500

Sci-Hub of course is entirely parasitic on paywall subscription
publishing, and if that ceases to exist because Sci-Hub succeeds, then
Sci-Hub will cease to exist also.  Perhaps that is Elbakyan's goal.

But then the question arises: is driving everything into a Gold OA
model going to be better? If the largest commercial publishers
continue to find a way to profit from Gold OA and stay in business,
how does this benefit academe? It will no doubt be a boon to
researchers and the general public not attached to universities, but
universities will be bearing the lion's share of the cost for this new
system through the payment of APCs. Yes, there are other approaches to
OA besides APC models, but those too cost money to run and those costs
will principally be borne by universities also. This could turn out to
be just a gigantic shell game where the money to run the system just
comes out of different pockets in the university. And since the
largest research universities will have the most faculty publishing,
they will undoubtedly continue to bear the greatest financial burden,
as they do now in supporting university presses on which other
universities free-ride.

The challenges for those presses will increase also. Under the present
system, presses that publish journals sold by subscription use the
surpluses earned by journals to subsidize the publication of
monographs, which on the whole lose money. (I speak from experience in
having directed a medium-sized press for twenty years.) Many also rely
on Project Muse for e-publishing of journals, and Muse needs to sell
subscriptions to survive.  If a HSS version of Sci-Hub arises, and
those toll-access journals programs fail, the survival of many
university presses will be at risk--unless university administrators
step up to the plate and agree to fund an OA model, which so far
almost no administrations have agreed to do, besides a few
experimental programs at the margins. (Amherst College Press is an
exception.)  As it is, university press monograph programs are
suffering from the piracy of Lib-Gen.

Sandy Thatcher