I completely follow your argument Stevan, and agree with it, as far as it goes. There is however an aspect that you have not covered, and you should include it in your analysis.
You write as though reader-side subscriptions were the only alternative to author-side publishing fees as a way of funding publishers. (As ways of funding access one must add green access too, to save you telling me so.) In fact many universities have another option: pay-per-view. The University of Tasmania (mine) has had a system of this sort in place since at least 1998, whereby any researcher can request (online in the intranet) an article from any journal to which the University does not subscribe, and the Document Delivery service will provide an e-copy (usually a pdf) usually within two days. Yes this is not instant, but serious researchers are prepared to wait that long, despite the nay-sayers. The University picks up the cost up to a reasonable limit; if the cost is over the Department has to agree to fund the difference. This seldom happens, and when it does it is for expensive journals in Mining, etc. The interesting thing is that this is an system that you describe as anarchically growing, article-by-article, rather than the journal-by-journal or publisher bundle system. It has enabled the University of Tasmania to cancel many of the subscriptions that it previously held, and still come out in front. Better still, it has enabled the practical closure of the print journal accessioning system (where online versions are available), saving substantial salaries. We know for example that researchers seldom [physically] visit our [physical] libraries these days, they access articles online. If we ever reached the state where we relied on this system totally, then a per-article viewing fee would be easy to compare with that of a per-article publication fee. Of course we are never likely to go so far. But what it does show up is the key difference in where we are now: paying to read articles, as against where we want to be: paying to publish articles. The real difference is not between bundling and aggregations vs articles, but in this. I could speculate that if Finch et al had done a better analysis, they could have suggested applying the money they want to take away from researchers to University journal presses for start-up costs, on a competitive basis, and conditional on the funded journal being open access. Now that would have created a good argument. It would have created sustainable open access journals, in areas of UK strength, and the funds would have a sunset clause in them, after which the journals should be self-sustaining. One could rely on the universities being economical, because it would not be core business, though prestigious. Arthur Sale Tasmania, Australia _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
