From: Sue Gardner <[log in to unmask]> Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2015 14:40:29 +0000 Ari, Thank you very much for your comments. I agree that the whole system needs to be reconsidered. The current system invites corruption and mediocrity and does not serve readers nor authors. The only entity that invariably does well in the current system is publishers. In lieu of rehashing my detailed thoughts on this the list, the synopsis is: readers and authors should not pay for content creation or access, funders (public and private) should pay publishers directly, and institutions and aggregators should be not-for-profit middlemen/providers. In this scenario, readers and authors pay indirectly in a distributed fashion by paying taxes and supporting businesses that pay the for-profit publishers. Publishers in this scenario are accountable directly to funders, and can not run away with profits to the same extent as they do currently. It's a closed loop. Libre vs. gratis is an entirely separate issue, and is just as salient, but does not advance the economic discussion directly. Sue Gardner Sue Ann Gardner, MLS Scholarly Communications Librarian Discovery and Resource Management University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lincoln, Nebraska 68588-4100 USA [log in to unmask] ________________________________________ From: Ari Belenkiy <[log in to unmask]> Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2015 12:40:22 -0700 Let me humbly remark that Soviet model remunerated the authors while the gold OA initiated by Vitek Tracz robs them of money! Moreover, the latter model tilts balance toward mediocre papers whose authors are able to pay the "entrance" fees. But the most tricky word in all this discussion about OA is "customers". Who are they - those who need to read a host of newly published medical articles immediately and free of charge? I suspect they are rich elderly folks who are seeking immediate cure for their life threatening diseases. They are the major beneficiaries of OA. It is for their health and sake OA came to destroy the traditional publishing routine. They need their doctors be able to access any innovation in the medical field. They are not sure their doctors would be eager to pay to read the article. So they need them free. And immediately. The authors so far are the "martyrs" of OA. Before the OA era, the authors did not have a "privilege" of paying fees - the libraries of their institutions paid the price of being acquainted with the latest research via subscriptions. Now, with gold OA model and a host of authors who subscribed to it, the libraries seem to have to pay less than earlier. But is it so? The money to the libraries always came and come from the student fees. Do we see the tuition fees went down by at least one buck after introduction of OA? Asking all the questions in the last several years, I got a standard answer that the "gold OA" is "profanation" of a "true" OA, which is... "green OA". Let me again remark that the "green OA" is non-sense and no publisher will ever embrace it wholeheartedly. Those of them who halfheartedly did this (to avoid an outcry from the liberal vociferous university folks) smartly introduced a so-called "embargo period", which effectively kills the very idea of OA. Except for the negative sides of OA already mentioned here by others, I cannot see any positive result from OA. True, I am not sure that Vitek Trasz must be blamed for this outcome. Ari Belenkiy, PhD Vancouver BC