From: Subbiah Arunachalam <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2012 23:05:33 -0700

Ms Dutton says that BMJ tried Green and failed. I thought what BMJ
tried was Gold OA, although, like Prof. Andrew Adams, all I care is
for all of science and scholarship to be available free to all no
matter if it is through the Green or the Gold channel.

I do not know why a large number of people give too much weightage to
publishing companies, when in reality the part they play in the entire
process of scholarly communication is rather small. Ask high energy
physicists. They can carry on with arXiv even if all journals are
closed down tomorrow.

Please remember we do research to advance knowledge and benefit people
at large and not to increase the profit margins of journal publishing
companies. Close to 70% of R&D investments in India come from the
Government, meaning taxpayers. The money should eventually benefit the
people, most of whom are poor. A large chunk of it now goes to journal
subscriptions (through about a dozen consortia). A professor at the
Indian Institute of Science points out that  a very small proportion
of these journals are actually being used by the faculty and students
at his institute.

Look at the OER scenario. OER started much later than the OA
repositories and OA journals, and yet today OER content is far larger
than the OA content and literally millions of people are benefiting.
In India, the NPTEL programme is doing very well.

To me it seems that Dame Janet Finch and the members of her
Committee have done harm to the world by reversing the general
trend in the UK. It will take awhile for others to recover the lost ground.

Arun


On Sun, Aug 5, 2012 at 6:29 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> From: Stella Dutton <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2012 16:09:13 +0100
>
> Jan is right  that insisting on 'green' open access before 'gold' can
> be considered is at the very least like opening the parachute a split
> second before hitting the ground.  The only thing I would add is that
> most publishers don't believe that they will be handed the  parachute!
>
> The idea that gold can only be entertained after green has made
> subscriptions unsustainable is simply not practical .   At what stage
> are subs considered unsustainable?  Who makes that judgement? How many
> journals would wither away before the gold route would be allowed.
>
> Publishers simply cannot see the way through with a green only route.
> All the processes involved in vetting and disseminating research
> papers have costs associated with them which some way or other have to
> be picked up.  Most publishers support the gold route because it
> allows them to transition in a planned and gradual way from one system
> where the reader picks up the cost to another system where the author
> does.  Evolution rather than revolution tends to be less risky for
> all, and I'm talking about less risky for science here not just
> publishers.  At the BMJ , we had an experiment for several years where
> our papers were entirely free, as another publisher said to me the
> 'nobody pays' business model.  It was no surprise to me that our subs
> income fell significantly. Subsequently, we introduced access controls
> for our non research papers material and we have now introduced an
> author pays model for research papers.  So, I feel that in a way we
> have sort of done the green only route, proved it didn't work and have
> now introduced gold.
>
> Stella Dutton
> Chief Executive Officer
> BMJ Publishing Group Limited
> BMA House
> Tavistock Square
> London  WC1H 9JR