I am inclined to agree with Keith. However, it needs to be acknowledged that researchers are not always very discerning when choosing a publisher. I have had some say to me, âIn an ideal world I would not opt to pay to publish with this or that particular publisher, but I need to get my work published urgently, so I am just going to bite the bullet.â
For that reason some OA publishers seem quite content not to be part of the OASPA community, and happy to operate by their own rules -- in the knowledge that there is a ready market for their services. So while one might argue that the research community can afford to ignore these companies and simply carry on using subscription publishers and Green OA, in the hope that the market will somehow create an optimal OA publishing ecosystem, I am less confident.   From: American Scientist Open Access Forum [mailto:american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org] On Behalf Of keith.jeff...@stfc.ac.uk Sent: 16 February 2010 12:00 To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Subject: Interview with Open Access publisher In-Tech/Sciy   All - Richard Poynder recently suggested that there were three bogeymen haunting the OA movement: (1) asking authors to pay to publish could turn scholarly publishing into a vanity press; (2) OA publishing will in any case inevitably lead to lax or even non-existent peer review; (3) OA publishing is not financially sustainable. http://poynder.blogspot.com/2010/02/oa-interviews-sciyo-aleksandar-lazinica.htm l In my opinionâ¦.. There is already evidence of (1) with various publishers trying to scam payment for publishing (fortunately very few cases to date). As a consequence of (1), (2) inevitably happens - but hopefully only in the case of a small number of so-called journals. It may be that (3) is true; with all information to date indicating gold OA costs 3 to 4 times more than current subscription models (the figure of 3 comes from our own estimates at STFC, 4 comes from the recent posting on AMSCI concerning the ACM article). But of course if current subscription models (maintaining peer review) are backed up by green OA via IRs then everyone has the benefit of OA at a much reduced cost. In my opinion, the answer for academics - especially in these days of financial stringency - is to keep with the subscription model and go green OA and let future scholarship ecosystems develop. Happy to discuss further... Keith ---------------------------------------------------------- Prof Keith G Jeffery  E: keith.jeff...@stfc.ac.uk Director Information Technology & International Strategy Science and Technology Facilities Council Rutherford Appleton Laboratory          Harwell Science and Innovation Campus Didcot, OXON OX11 0QX  UK T: +44 1235 44 6103 F:+44 1235 44 5147                                   President ERCIM & STFC Director:    http://www.ercim.org/ W3C European Host at ERCIM              http://www.w3.org/ President euroCRIS                       http://www.eurocris.org/ Board Member EOS          http://www.openscholarship.org/ Chair, APA           http://www.alliancepermanentaccess.eu/ VLDB Trustee Emeritus:                      http://www.vldb.org/ EDBT Board Member                         http://www.edbt.org/                                                          ???                                       ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------- The contents of this email are sent in confidence for the use of the intended recipient only. If you are not one of the intended recipients do not take action on it or show it to anyone else, but return this email to the sender and delete your copy of it The STFC telecommunications systems may be monitored in accordance with the policy available from <http://dlitd.dl.ac.uk/policy/monitoring/monitoring%20statement.htm>. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------  -- Scanned by iCritical. Â