From: "Hamaker, Charles" <[log in to unmask]> Date: Fri, 20 Sep 2013 01:16:44 +0000 My problems with Rick's suggestion come in what little we know of the nature of green OA provision. Phil Davis has indicated that researchers cherry pick their publications, putting their best articles out as Green OA. See his article in BMJ 2008;337:a568 that notes: " prestigious articles are more likely to be made freely accessible." http://www.bmj.com/content/337/bmj.a568 If that is still true, cancelling on the basis of green OA would mean, yes, the most cited articles have a fair chance of being readable to Univ. of Utah researchers. . For a research project, article, review, grant application etc. it's not just the top of the pile that gets sorted through, its the whole thing. So one potential outcome for the U of U is that Utah will pay MORE for the less cited literature ie. in ILL and document delivery fees. or researchers will miss it all together. And even the green OA article has potential issues. What researcher will be satisfied with the OA version ? They need to cite the final form of publication, probably why arXiv has not had an appreciable impact on subscription rates to High Energy Physics journals. We all have in that long running example, it seems to me, evidence that green articles only, are insufficient for researchers citation needs. Even when the vast majority of a literature is freely available, high impact articles will still need citation from the original journal, and in areas with less green OA participation, lesser impact content may well not be available at all. What Green OA does is present the contents of original research, which if the researcher is going to follow up based on that, focuses on the official end point, the published article. Is something missing in my logic? If so I'd be interested in hearing any and all rebuttals. I know of no evidence that green OA is a threat to subscription based journals, and in fact as "free " advertising, probably pushes the researcher to the original. Increasing the embargo, however has a potential of harming ultimately, awareness of the very fields whose literature it is supposedly "guarding". Green OA apparently does provide access to the information that may be critical especially for breaking research areas that need to know as soon as possible what pothers are doing. Isn't that how its worked so far in HEP? Or am I mistaken? I'm an advocate of Green OA, it has obvious advantages for both the author and the reader, the novice and the expert and should be widely encouraged for many reasons. But I don't see journal cancellation as one of the logical outcomes. Rick's suggestion of cancellation based on Green OA availability does not cut the Gordian Knot or solve the puzzle of the Minotaur's labyrinth. There are lots of other reasons and justifications for cancelling high priced journals, but this isn't one of them. Chuck