From: Duncan Hilchey <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2016 12:39:28 -0400

Thanks All for your interest in the Community Supported Journal concept.

I¹m very encouraged by the solidarity. As a nonprofit with a mission to
make the world a little better, we like to think we have a lot in common
with libraries and librarians!

I have also received some feedback off-list and I appreciate the candor.
There is considerable risk for us financially since we don¹t know if any
shareholding research group or organization will put their resources where
their mouth is. As for individuals, we recently conducted a survey of our
authors (n=403) who as a group expressed support for JAFSCD becoming OA.
Indeed, respondents reported broad agreement that OA maximizes the
distribution of their food systems scholarship while simultaneously
increasing accessibility, especially to practitioners in the field who
benefit from their applied research. But there was also hesitation among
some authors to pay submission and publishing fees (many of our authors
are social scientists with limited resources), and some suggested it
smacked of a "pay to play² scheme (which we¹re seeing pop up so much these
days). One respondent said just the image of pay to play (even if not
true) could damage the reputation of our Journal.

With regard to libraries, there is the concern that they might similarly
report philosophical support for the idea of converting their
subscriptions to OA Shares, but that they ultimately (especially state
supported libraries) would have difficulty in making/justifying the
switch. Why should they pay the freight of others? There is a wide range
of economic realities libraries/librarians are dealing with and my sense
is that many would struggle making this a priority if just for the greater
good.

Perhaps we should not ³request,² but actually require submission and
publishing fees from those author¹s whose institutions are not OA
Shareholders?

Thanks to all for your input and suggested resources!


Duncan
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Duncan Hilchey
Co-Coordinator, Lyson Center for Civic Agriculture and Food Systems
<http://www.lysoncenter.org>; Editor in chief, Journal of Agriculture,
Food Systems, and Community Development <http://www.agdevjournal.com>
[log in to unmask]

JAFSCD <http://www.agdevjournal.com> is published by the Thomas A. Lyson
Center for Civic Agriculture and Food Systems, a project of the Center for
Transformative Action <http://www.centerfortransformativeaction.org/>, an
affiliate of Cornell University.



>From: Ivy Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
>Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2016 04:02:04 +0000
>
>Duncan,
>
>There is increasing interest in, and support for, community funding
>models within the library community, including ones that convert
>subscriptions to open access support.  I think many of us would be
>interested to learn more about your model.
>
>Best,
>
>Ivy Anderson
>Director of Collections
>California Digital Library
>University of California
>[log in to unmask]  |  http://cdlib.org
>
>
>
>From: LibLicense-L Discussion Forum
>[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of LIBLICENSE
>Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2016 7:24 PM
>Subject: "Community Supported Journal" Concept: feedback requested
>From: Duncan Hilchey <[log in to unmask]>
>Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2016 15:57:42 -0400
>
>Dear Liblicense Members,
>
>This is Duncan Hilchey Editor in chief of the Journal Journal of
>Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development. We are a small
>nonprofit journal with most of our income from institutional library
>license fees and individual subscriptions. To better meet our mission
>(to maximize the distribution of our authors¹ work, and have the
>biggest impact out in the field of food systems--e.g., informing the
>practice of organizations working with small farms, farmers¹ markets,
>food hubs, and hunger food security organizations, etc.), we are
>exploring the development of a new OA model called the "Community
>Supported Journal" (CSJ), which includes the following basic features:
>
>* Maintaining JAFSCD¹s high standard of quality, including
>double-blind peer review;
>
>* Requesting modest submission fees and publishing fees from authors
>on an able to pay basis (Food systems scholars do not have
>deep-pockets);
>
>* Requesting annual donations from readers;
>
>* Selling ³OA Sponsor Shares² to allied academic programs and
>organizations;
>
>* Making available a broad range of benefits to shareholders,
>including promotional opportunities, submission and publishing fee
>waivers, and special publishing opportunities (depending of the share
>level purchased); and,
>
>* Converting institutional licenses to OA Shares.
>
>We are borrowing the concept from Community Supported Agriculture, in
>which a farmer sells shares of the crop in advance‹e.g., $500 per year
>for a weekly box of vegetables during the harvest season. In our case,
>we would be selling so-called ³OA shares² of our annual content, which
>will then be available to readers around the world. Shareholders are
>thus generously underwriting the cost of OA for the benefit of
>everyone (with everyone giving what they can). In addition to that
>warm fuzzy feeling for helping us make research-based applied
>scholarship around the globe, shareholding libraries would receive
>acknowledgment for their support.
>
>My question is, do you think libraries would consider converting their
>current licenses into OA shares? That is, would they continue to
>support us as an Open Access Journal in return for promotion of their
>support?
>
>Thanks in advance for your constructive criticism of the CSJ concept.
>
>Best,
>
>Duncan
>
>- - - - - - - - - - - -
>
>Duncan Hilchey
>Co-Coordinator, Lyson Center for Civic Agriculture and Food Systems
>Editor in chief, Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community
>Development
>[log in to unmask]