[Open-access] Fwd: [GOAL] Re: Fwd: Fee-free scholarly publishing

Thu Aug 16 18:33:56 UTC 2012

Forwaded from the GOAL list as it conatins a lot of useful stuff.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Heather Morrison <hgmorris at sfu.ca>
Date: Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 6:51 PM
Subject: [GOAL] Re: Fwd: Fee-free scholarly publishing
To: "Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)" <goal at eprints.org>

One of the factors that makes fee-free scholarly publishing possible is
subsidy funding, for example government and/or institutional subsidies.

In North America, a majority of university libraries provide hosting and
support services for journals that their faculty are involved in
publishing, as documented by: Hahn, K. (2008). Research library publishing
services: New options for university publishing. Washington, D.C.:
Association of Research Libraries. Retrieved from
http://www.arl.org/sc/models/lib-publishing/index.shtml and Taylor, D.,
Morrison, H., Owen, B., Vezina, K., & Waller, A. (2011). Open access
publishing in canada: Current and future library and university press
supports. Preprint, http://summit.sfu.ca/item/49

Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) has long
had an academic journal subsidy program, because in Canada and most other
countries with a very few exceptions, HSS publishing is not a profitable
concern. Today, this program includes an Aid to Open Access Journals
component.

One way that traditional subscription-based publishers have found to move
to full open access, is to move to electronic-only publication at the same
time. For a not-for-profit publisher, the costs of subscriptions often
barely cover the costs of printing, mailing, and tracking the subscriber
base.

Kevin Haggerty describes the bold move of the Canadian Journal of Sociology
to open access here:
http://informationr.net/ir/13-1/paper338.html

One hypothetical (but realistic) scenario: with free or very low cost
journal hosting (based on cost-recovery) provided by the organization, plus
a little bit of subsidy funding to help out with editorial costs (e.g. a
bit of teaching release time to clear some of an academic's time for
editing, copyediting), means that many a small scholar or scholarly-society
led journal can make the move to full open access.

This is an approach that I would recommend for the consideration of others.
Financially, this is much more prudent than subsidizing article processing
fees of large, highly profitable commercial publishers. A smaller amount in
dollars can help the scholarly society sector to survive and grow
(important for other reasons besides publishing, this sector does much
more). I would anticipate that the commercial sector will continue to
survive and thrive, but they'd have to compete - there is room for profit,
but not at the 30% profit margins that a select few have become accustomed
to.

best,

Heather Morrison

-- 
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
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