Below is a posting, with permission, of an offline exchange with Jan Velterop, of Springer Open Choice....(The title "Clarifying the Logic of Open Choice" is mine, not Jan's.)
Jan argues that paying for Open Choice Gold OA at this time, while subscriptions are still paying all the costs of publishing, would not be double-paying for OA.
I argue that it would be.
Jan argues that mandating Green OA will destroy journals and peer review.
I argue that it will provide OA -- and that if it ever does cause subscription cancellation, then that will be the time to convert to Gold OA, paying the institutional Gold OA publishing costs out of the institutional subscription cancellation savings themselves, rather than pre-emptively double-paying, as we would be doing if we did it now, while subscriptions are still paying all the costs of publishing....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/24/2007 03:01:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.