From: David Groenewegen <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2013 16:55:08 +1000

In the age of the Big Deal, I think the symmetry is pretty strong - in
both cases the crux of it is, if you publish more, you earn more, and
the easiest way to publish more is to drop your standards. I can
ignore a sales pitch as well as anyone, I was amused that the Elsevier
statement implied that this basic truth didn't apply to them.

Your defence of the subscription method:

" This is the real virtue of the subscription model:  it
> demands competition based on editorial quality, as libraries, with
> limited budgets, will cancel everything else."

might have been true once (to some extent - plenty of crappy journals
survived for decades out of inertia or were subscribed to by libraries
because a faculty member was on the editorial board), but really
doesn't hold up any more.

If the "International Journal of Ballpoint Pen Manufacture" is part of
a publisher package, and it produces the equivalent of 1200 pages of
rubbish every year my library can't cancel it without cancelling the
package, which might have dozens of titles we do want. And if it
increases to 1320 pages of rubbish next year, this 10% increase in
"content" will be one of the justifications for the 10% price increase
of the package. Once your title is under the sheltering umbrella of a
big publisher, there is no incentive to be more selective, nor is
there any incentive for the publisher to remove a title. If there was,
the journal packages would stabilised in size years ago, but they
haven't. They publish more pages and more titles every year. And they
put their prices up beyond inflation every year.

The incentive systems in academia encourage this of course, but that's
not the point. OA and subscription publishing are certainly different
systems, but they both gain from publishing more.

D

On 23/07/2013 7:21 AM, LIBLICENSE wrote:
>
> From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
> Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2013 07:57:15 -0400
>
> I don't think there is the symmetry between the two cases David
> Groenewegen cites as he seems to imply.  But before explaining why, we
> should not be surprised that any commercial venture presents information
> in a way that serves its interests.  Surely anyone growing up in a
> market economy knows that.  So we discount things that sales people tell
> us as a matter of course.
>
> If subscription-based publications were simply adding articles to boost
> prices, then we would see that reflected in eroding impact factors.  My
> experience is that traditional publishers more often have the opposite
> discussion, that is, whether to increase the rejection rate in order to
> improve impact factors.  This is because market forces demand quality
> publications.  This is the real virtue of the subscription model:  it
> demands competition based on editorial quality, as libraries, with
> limited budgets, will cancel everything else.
>
> The virtues of Gold OA are many, but this model is indeed subject to
> manipulation.  This is precisely what Jeffrey Beall's work addresses.
>   But we have seen even non-manipulative alterations of editorial
> regimes in OA publishing.  Consider the development of PLoS ONE, which
> uses a different editorial strategy from the PLoS flagship journals.  At
> PLoS the alteration of the editorial protocol changed the acceptance
> rate of papers, which has turned out to be highly profitable.
>
> At this point the conversation breaks down into an argument
> (irresolvable, in my opinion) over whether the community-managed
> post-publication peer review of PLoS ONE is better than, inferior to, or
> simply different from the editorial policies of traditional
> publications.  I subscribe to the "different from" school, but there is
> no end of argument over this.
>
> I think it's a red herring to try to demonstrate equivalency between
> traditional and OA forms of publication.  These are different systems;
> they have different characteristics.  Different people will make
> different determinations, and these determinations will vary depending
> on context.  I much prefer the NY Times to Reddit, but I dip into Reddit
> from time to time.
>
> Joe Esposito