on 2/6/2004 Jean-Claude Guédon wrote: > I believe Stevan has said most of what is needed to answer your message. > > For my part, I will focus on OA journals and would like to underscore the fact > that this particular way to move to open access will require some > concertation among a variety of ploayers. It is not simply a matter of an > author dealing with the business plan of an OA journal; libraries are saing > money with OA journals and could perhaps be persuaded to put back some of > those savings in the publishing circuit by contributing to institutional > access deals with such publications. Alternatively, universities as a whole > or research centres could explore doing the same. Finally, agencies that > allocate research grants can certainly build policies favouring the support > of publishing costs, especially in the case of OA journals. This is a trend > which seems to be growing at this point in history: the Hughes Foundation, > the Wellcome Trust and the Max Planck Gesellschaft, among others, have moved > ahead on this front.
We have over 30 years of statistics that demonstrate the trend has been in the other direction: (a) higher education institutions have systematically reduced spending on libraries; (b) the savings have gone to the bottom line - profitability - rather than research or education; (c) agencies that sponsor research have not approached reforming the "library" component of indirect cost application. They never have, even though the US Science Policy Act of 1976 directs top agencies to take an active interest in science communications. They are clearly more interested in the employment of scientists than in their productivity. Moreover, authors are generally ignoring the OA movement. Many others cannot afford to subsidize publication -- OA or otherwise. It appears to me that the OA movement is one more dot.com scheme gone bust. There is an alternative solution. Productivity should be the goal of the science community - authors, sponsors, readers, publishers, librarians, and the institutions that profit from grants. The OA movement has missed the mark by seeking financial efficiencies rather than effective science. The OA discussions fail because them include research claims but not the totality of science publishing. If we learned anything from Sputnik, it was that infrastructure -- including digests, reviews, libraries and library research and computerized index/abstract services -- deal with the chaos of research claims better than the every-researcher-for-himself/herself approach envisioned by OA. There is simply too much for any researcher to read, to digest and to evaluate. Readers that lack institutional connections can hardly begin to prepare credible research in most fields. Researchers need tools to prepare research. If 'tolls' provide tools and infrastructure directed at productivity, then 'tolls' should be embraced, as they were for hundreds of years. The alternative OA approach is this: If higher education institutions were to realign library spending to match the growth of R&D, I believe publishers of research would be comfortable in permitting broad free access. A solid case should be made for governmental support of the indirect cost of libraries as a policy of science spending, since library research is essential for the preparation of science. It is a reasonable task. In the US, a mere four percent of all academic libraries control 40% of spending. These are the libraries that dominate the customer lists of academic research journals. They number about 140 institutions. OA activists, including the major disciplinary associations, could be more effective by persuading a few hundred universities and a dozen agencies to support productivity in science than by trying to convince millions of authors to reject the social bonds that determine where they submit their papers. Best wishes, Albert Henderson Pres., Chess Combination Inc. POB 2423 Bridgeport CT 06608-0423 <a...@chessnic.com> Former Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY 1994-2000