Stevan, I do not think it possible to "disentangle the serials budget problem from the access/impact problem."
The number of subscriptions to many ISI-level scientific serials is at a critically low point The funding at many independent scholarly societies is at a critically low point. Both paths to OA depend to a considerable extent on the continued existence of the journals. The "green" repositories path relies on them for arranging peer review, copy editing, and permanent archiving. The gold "OA journals" path relies on having journals there to change to OA. Any viable plan for OA must at the very least not undercut the existing journals, or must propose an alternative. There are alternatives. For OA journals, it is possible to create new journals to replace those that can not or will not convert. This will obviously be slower than converting existing titles--and neither of them will be very rapid. For repositories, it would be possible to convert them into permanent structures, capable of supporting the functions now done by journals. It would be possible, but again, very difficult. I accept that your arguments for not doing this immediately are probably correct. For individual archives in a supplemental role, there must be something to supplement. Some journals are strong enough to survive alongside the archives, like the APS, Many are not. It will be a very difficult argument to continue subscribing to extremely expensive or little-used titles, once a large part of the contents is OA. How expensive or little-used a title must be, or how large a part must be OA, is open only to conjecture on our part and funding decisions on others'. As a minimum, one can safely say that just as some journals will easily survive, some will not, and it is disingenuous to suggest otherwise. There may be some scientists who care only about the exposure of their work the year after publication. Most citations studies show much longer half-lives, and most scholars hope to have a permanent influence. Fortunately, many others are interested in sustainability, will discuss it, and will plan for it. Librarians in particular are quite accustomed to being left to deal with the practical details of maintaining and preserving the scholarly communications system. Dr. David Goodman dgood...@liu.edu This has been written for liblicense-l; other lists should link, rather than copy, except with the permission of the author.
