Coincidentally, the author of this article, Mike Taylor, has written more recently on the topic on the Guardian Web site. In the comments attached to that article Mike Taylor criticises Stevan Harnad's response: "it really doesn't help that you so consistently position Green OA as an competitor, rather than a complement, to Gold OA." (Stevan provides a further response.) http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/comment-permalink/15697124
In both of Mike Taylor's articles reference to green open access is conspicuously absent, so hardly a 'complement' to gold but ignored. Mike Taylor is not alone in this when discussing open access in the popular press. That might explain why Stevan feels bound to intervene so often to complete the record. The whole thrust of Mike Taylor's case leads to his third point highlighted below, that libraries could could save 'eight times as much' by switching from subscriptions to author fees. This amounts, by his own calculation, to saying that everyone should publish in PLoS One. That seems to me to be the most partial view of all. Steve Hitchcock WAIS Group, Building 32 School of Electronics and Computer Science University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK Email: sh...@ecs.soton.ac.uk Twitter: http://twitter.com/stevehit Connotea: http://www.connotea.org/user/stevehit Tel: +44 (0)23 8059 9379 Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 9379 On 19 Apr 2012, at 10:59, Consol Garcia/BUPC/UPC wrote: > Dear all, > > I've read this opinion in the Scientist Academic publishing is broken by > Michael P. Taylor and I think should be of interest of the list > The current system by which academics publish their scientific discoveries is > a massive waste of money. > > i would like to point out the three reasons why, according to Michael P > Taylor, researchers continue publishing their papers in Elsevier, even > knowing that the average cost per article in any Elsevier journal in 2010 was > $10,500 US. > > First: monopoly effort of some journals (there are no competitors in some > areas. Cell > > Second: Academics tend to be conservative > > (...) Third, and most important, while it may cost a fraction as much money > to publish in an open-access journal, those savings are not rewarded to the > researchers. With open-access publishing, the researchers must pay those fees > out of their own grant money, or with department funds, while subscription > bills are footed by the university libraries, which have completely separate > budgets. So, even though, under an open-access publishing regime, for every > thousand dollars that a researcher or department spends on author fees, the > library could save eight times as much in paid journal subscriptions, the > division of budgets within universities (and the fact that until all > publishing is open access libraries will still have to continue subscribing > to paid journals) is inhibiting this transition. > > I'm sure the list will add some more. > > http://the-scientist.com/2012/03/19/opinion-academic-publishing-is-broken/ > > Cheers > > Consol Garcia Gómez > Responsable Unitat de Recerca > Biblioteca del Campus del Baix Llobregat > UPC - BarcelonaTech > CBL Edifici D-7 > Esteve Terradas, 10 > 08860 Castelldefels > Tel. 93 552 35 63 > consol.gar...@upc.edu > http://bibliotecnica.upc.edu/BCBL/ > http://twitter.com/BibliotecaCBL_______________________________________________ > GOAL mailing list > GOAL@eprints.org > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal > _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal