David Stern, Open Access or Differential Pricing for Journals: The Road Best Traveled?Online, March 1, 2005. Abstract: 'Open access (OA) is becoming a reality, with new cost models under development. The various cost models will have serious short- and long-term implications for libraries and dangerously impact the scholarly communication network. I believe that the adoption of the OA model for journals will create serious instabilities within the existing scholarly publication industry. OA, as a business model, is neither necessary nor desirable. With or without the often-discussed author charges approach, it would be almost impossible to obtain the same amount of total revenue through selected libraries as now exists from the much larger base of library subscriptions. Tiered or differential pricing (and services) among the existing subscribers would be a far more logical approach to supporting a modified scholarly journal distribution network.'
(PS: A lengthy critique of the upfront funding model for OA journals. It does not address OA archiving. Stern's argument will take some time to digest, but it seems to assume that OA is a business model rather than a form of access compatible with many different business models, that virtually all OA journals charge author-side processing fees and that these fees would always be paid by universities, that OA journals are just as expensive to produce as TA journals, and that preserving the "commercial aspects of the existing journal publication system" is a criterion. It also assumes, at least in asides, and inconsistently, that the upfront funding model was proposed as a diversionary tactic by TA publishers and that OA depends on altruism more than self-interest.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/01/2005 10:54:00 AM.
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.
