Dick Kaser, Funding Open Access, Information Today blog, November 29, 2006. Excerpt:
I had a fascinating conversation at lunch with Anthony Watkinson (center), a publishing consultant and part-time lecturer at University College London. Just back from The Charleston Conference where he spoke on "The Future of Publishing in an Age of Uncertainty," he engaged me in a discussion about Open Access publishing.
I was not taking notes, but the bottom line seemed to be that Open Access is a publishing model still in search of a business model . . . or at least a sustainable funding base.
Though many institutions have pledged support of the idea, Watkinson observed, few have come forward with the money to pay for publishing papers in such a way that they can be offered free-of-charge to users.
Comments. Depending on how Anthony fleshed out this comment, I could agree or disagree. More specifically:
Today the Directory of Open Access Journals lists 2,480 peer-reviewed open-access journals. That's about 10% of the whole in about 10 years. Print and toll-access journals have had about 350 years to reach their current level of penetration.
A large minority of these OA journals (about 47%) are funded by author-side fees, usually paid by the author's research grant. The majority are no-fee journals, supported by institutional subsidies and other methods. These journals have business models. Are they adequately funded? Some probably are and some probably aren't, just like subscription journals.
Long-term, the best source of funding to pay for OA journals is the money now spent on TA journals. So we're not facing an economic mystery, just a complicated choice.
To many informed observers, the subscription model is doomed. For example, a public letter (January 2004) signed by the head librarians of the 11 campuses of the University of California, and Lawrence Pitts, Chair of the UC Academic Senate, asserted that the subscription model was "incontrovertibly unsustainable". The uncertainties of OA business models must be considered together with, or compared to, the uncertainties of TA business models.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/30/2006 09:49:00 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.
