From: "Hamaker, Charles" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 3 Oct 2013 03:40:01 +0000

Rick, I think this is at the center of what I see as wrong about your proposal.

"... despite the fact that a reasonable facsimile of the content for
which you're paying is increasingly available for free."

the key is "reasonable facsimile."

How can a library that has a long tradition of providing the version
of record, supply as part of any good faith effort a copy where it is
unknowable that an article is "a reasonable facsimile"?

Versioning is not a standard feature of IR provisioning. Without
version information the library could be through it's action providing
information that is inaccurate, out of date, dangerous, jettisoned
during review, (you know the varieties as well as I do)

The library can't possibly know what a reasonable facsimile of an
article might be absent versioning information.

You have made no suggestion as to how a library could know which copy
is closest to a "reasonable facsimile".

Absent that, I don't see you have made a case at all for the library's
involvement in green OA provision of articles from the general web.

I think you will agree it is not the library's job to even imply one
version out on the web is better than another. That is not a judgment
the library can make.

Students and faculty and researchers rely on the version of record for
clarification and accuracy. To propose libraries supply articles
without such assurance which is what the publisher's version does,
seems to me an  abdication of the role of a library in provisioning
quality information.

That might of course be your  intention: to get libraries or rather
your library out of the role of provision of high quality scholarly
information when there is a fee involved.

In which case the arguments are quite different than arguing for
provision of green OA.

Regards
Chuck