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I merely reported what I was told by my IOPP contacts; clearly, however, not everyone there agreed with that view. I can't cite it because I can't now find it (I no longer have access to all the documents I had as ALPSP CEO); I don't see the point in retracting it because I believe that I accurately reported what I was told. Clearly Alma feels she did the same. We can speculate until we're blue in the face, but whether or not green OA does, in the end, damage subscription journals, of course, only time will tell. Sally Sally Morris South House, The Street Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 3UU, UK Tel: +44(0)1903 871286 Fax: +44(0)8701 202806 Email: sa...@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk -----Original Message----- From: American Scientist Open Access Forum [mailto:american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org] On Behalf Of Alma Swan Sent: 21 July 2009 13:32 To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Subject: Re: OA in High Energy Physics Arxiv Yields Five-Fold Citation Advantage > Since my informants are no longer at IOP, I can't give you chapter and > verse, but assure you I'm not making it up (and it was about subscriptions). > I recall a speaker at an ALPSP seminar telling us much the same story for > London Mathematical Society journals. My concern is not about whether *you* make things up but about the fact that yesterday on this list you told everyone that *I* do. What my informant (undoubtedly the same individual as your informant) at IOPP also volunteered, and which I also reported at the time, was that the rate of subscription attrition had remained the same for *all* IOPP journals over the time arXiv had been in existence, hence no arXiv-specific effect was apparent. That is, IOPP publishes many journals outside the fields covered by arXiv and they, too, were experiencing subscription attrition (at the same rate as those in fields covered by arXiv. I append below some other quotes provided to me and approved for publication by the two physics society publishers at the time. Readers can then decide for themselves whether those two societies were saying that self-archiving was threatening their business [by undermining subscriptions], or not: Institute of Physics Publishing: "IOPP's experience as a learned society publisher illustrates the strong synergies and mutual benefits that currently exist between major peer-reviewed journals, such as our Classical and Quantum Gravity, and the arXiv e-print server. Both systems continue to serve the scientific community very effectively. Journals act as the "brand", setting standards for scientific quality. Our authors and editors tell us that they value publishing in a peer-reviewed journal because this continues as an essential requirement for establishing reputation and authority of the research they publish. Whilst posting an pre-print or post-print is becoming more of an essential in some areas of the physics community for immediate and wide dissemination. We do not see the arXiv or repositories threatening our business." N.B. Since then, the IOPP has established, and manages, the UK's mirror site for arXiv. The APS (American Physical Society): ³We don't consider it [arXiv] a threat. We expect to continue to have a symbiotic relationship with arXiv. As long as peer review is valued by the community (and it seems to be), we will be doing peer review.² ³ [We have] tried to cooperate closely with arXiv including establishing a mirror (jointly with Brookhaven National Laboratory)... We also revised our copyright statement to be explicitly in favor of author self-archiving. These efforts strengthened (rather than weakened) Physical Review D [an APS journal that covers high-energy physics] ?..I would say it is likely we maintained subscriptions to Physical Review D that we may otherwise have lost if we hadn't been so pro-arXiv ?.² Alma Swan Key Perspectives Ltd Truro, UK