From: Jan Velterop <[log in to unmask]> Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2011 10:21:48 +0000 Chris, You are right. The players don't necessarily act on behalf of the system. A kind of instance of the tragedy of the commons. It may be worth recounting that among the reasons we (my colleagues and I at Academic press, in 1995) devised the first 'BigDeal' was exactly the idea that if scientific information were seen as an 'infrastructural provision' on a national scale, there would be optimal access within the academic environment, with re-use built in. The first BigDeal was therefore a national deal (in the UK, with HEFCE, covering *all* institutes of higher education in the UK, without exception). We had high hopes of exporting these BigDeals to other countries as well. A national BigDeal involved, necessarily, some 'top-slicing' of funds. Unfortunately, individual institutions and librarians didn't like that. Loss of choice was often quoted: better to pay more for less with choice, than pay less for more without choice – the choice in effect being the choice to deny access to certain material. So after a few years the UK BigDeal fell apart into some 'biggish deals' and even more 'smallish deals', delivering much less benefit and 'degenerating' the idea into 'bundled subscriptions' rather than the truly national big deal with wide-ranging possibilities to help making research communication more efficient and effective. Elsewhere the idea of national BigDeals never took off seriously in the first place (with the exception of a few State-wide deals in the US). The original thinking behind the BigDeal led me in any case to the concept of open access, with the potential of putting control into the hands of authors and their funders, when the BigDeal as conceived 'degenerated' in a way. Good luck with national deals. Though sensible, my experience in that regard isn't great, albeit that circumstances have changed now. I'm much more optimistic about open access. Best, Jan * * **************************************** *Drs Johannes (Jan) Velterop, CEO* *Academic Concept Knowledge Ltd. (AQnowledge) +44 7525 026 991 (mobile) +44 1483 579 525 (landline UK) +31 70 75 33 789 (landline NL) * *Skype: Villavelius* *Email: [log in to unmask]**om* *[log in to unmask]* *aqnowledge.com* On 28 Nov 2011, at 22:21, LIBLICENSE wrote: From: "Armbruster, Chris" <[log in to unmask]> Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:18:50 -0800 Jan, we agree that research information overwhelm is what the system needs to deal with most importantly. Also, OAP with re-use rights is a fully complementary solution. Yet, the players in the system do not necessarily act on behalf of the system, and interestingly this does include many libraries and their institutions (who may be cutting funds for SB, and these cuts are predictable for the SB players - but have no plan for growing funded OAP in a predictable and/or steady manner). In these circumstances, it is worth thinking about negotiating national SB deals that include re-use rights. To my mind, a national SB deal that include re-use rights may be more interesting than any piecemeal Green OA approach, because it delivers re-use rights for the version of record and does so comprehensively for the whole content (potentially, from many or all publishers). Of course, buying re-use rights will cost extra, but, on the whole, this may not be more expensive than maintaining thousands of institutional repositories - and the value of re-use rights for SB content is definitely higher than for any Green OA material. Also, the coordination and transaction costs for achieving national SB deals that include re-use rights may be (much) lower than the for protracted efforts at implementing OA policy and OAP funding, just think of what the signatories to the Berlin Declaration or the EUROHORCS members have achieved or not. Best, Chris ________________________________________ From: LibLicense-L Discussion Forum [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of LIBLICENSE [[log in to unmask] Sent: 25 November 2011 01:33 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Future of the Subscription Model From: Jan Velterop <[log in to unmask]> Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2011 08:07:15 +0000 Surely, it's not "optimizing the synergy" of OA and SB publishing, but "optimising the efficacy of research communication" that it's all about? From that point of view, SB is decidedly sub-optimal, in contrast t, OA, particularly 'true' OA, machine-readable, with no impediments to re-use, so that computer-assisted large-scale analysis is possible. Computer-assisted large scale analysis (in addition to actual reading of selected articles) is fast becoming essential, due to the research information 'overwhelm' that the relentless increase in published research brings about. And not only in the form of research articles, but increasingly accompanied by (large) datasets as well. For that is the real problem: research information 'overwhelm'. The problems of how to finance libraries and publishing follow from that. As a result of this 'overwhelm', I see the entire edifice of research publishing changing. Subscriptions, peer-review, the very format of articles, funding, (traditional) libraries, (traditional) publishers, impact factors; not far before time is up for all of those. New concepts are emerging, integrating narrative and data, human- and machine-readability, pattern-analysis of large amounts of information and occasional linear reading, semantic navigation of knowledge, etc. The time that information is taken in by the drink, like water, is making place for a time in which information is being utilised as a carrier (like oceans) to navigate between knowledge 'destinations' and explore unknown shores. Jan Velterop