On Wed, 25 Jul 2001, George Lundberg wrote: > i certainly can agree with one point > the market will decide > however i would not count on any "windfall savings" unless there is a > secure on-going revenue stream > and that is, of course, a fundamental problem with any "giveaway" product
I am not quite sure what George means here (nor what he is taking me to mean): Note that most of this is hypothetical: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399we152.htm The part that is not hypothetical but certain is: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399we152.htm The (hypothetical) windfall savings would be those of the university libraries, from S/L/P cancellations, if (hypothetically) the online availability of the self-archived ("giveaway") version of all refereed articles (if/when most or all of them are indeed self-archived) were to cause a catastrophic drop in the demand (hence revenue streams) for the S/L/P version (on-paper, publisher's PDF, publisher's online enhancements). A portion (be it 10% or 30%) of those university windfall savings could then be used to pay the costs, on a per-paper submitted/accepted basis, to maintain the revenue streams for the sole remaining essential service from refereed journal publishers, namely, the implementation of peer review. The only part that is not hypothetical but certain is the preferability of free access to the refereed research literature (does anyone wish to contest this?), and the fact that author self-archiving would immediately provide this (does anyone wish to contest this?). Now let us unwrap these contingencies, to show how they could fail: (1) Researchers could fail to self-archive their refereed articles, hence fail to free them online, despite the potential benefits in visibility, access and impact. One hopes they will not fail to do this, and one can keep explaining and facilitating its feasibility, legality, and optimality, but there is always the possibility that the token will fail to drop, or to drop in enough researchers' minds, or to drop any time soon. In that case, the rest is moot. (2) Even if all refereed research is made available online for free in OAI-compliant Eprint Archives soon, this may not diminish the demand for the S/L/P version. In that case, the rest is moot. (3) But if the giveaway version does generate a catastrophic drop in the demand for the S/L/P version, as reflected in S/L/P cancellations, then the annual institutional windfall S/L/P savings are the natural candidate (though not the only one) for paying the essential peer-review service costs for that institution's outgoing research papers. Now the above is what I meant. Can anyone help me interpret what George meant? -------------------------------------------------------------------- Stevan Harnad har...@cogsci.soton.ac.uk Professor of Cognitive Science har...@princeton.edu Department of Electronics and phone: +44 23-80 592-582 Computer Science fax: +44 23-80 592-865 University of Southampton http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/ Highfield, Southampton http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/ SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing free access to the refereed journal literature online is available at the American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01): http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html You may join the list at the site above. Discussion can be posted to: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@amsci.org