RE: universities experiment with paying OA fees

["David Prosser" <david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk>]

I'm afraid that discrimination is a fact of life where there is 
not an unlimited budget.  Universities (and departments and 
research groups) make decisions on what research to pursue, what 
departments to fund, which groups to allocate space to, which 
journals and books to buy, what equipment to buy, how many 
researchers and students to send to conferences, etc., etc. In 
each case there is discrimination.  It is not unreasonable to 
suppose that there may be the same type of discrimination when it 
comes to where researchers publish.

And let's not forget this is already happening.  Page, figure, 
and reprint charges are already factors that researchers take 
into account when they decide where to publish.  Over the years 
Anthony will have heard the complaints of many UK researchers 
that they could not publish in US society journals because they 
did not have the funds to pay the charges.  There is a utopian 
myth that all under the subscription model authors are free to 
publish where they want - they're not!

I disagree with Sandy regarding the degree to which authors will 
be able to shop around.  It is certainly true that prestige is a 
hugely important factor in shaping an author's decision on where 
to submit their paper, but it's not the only one.  As I say, in 
the past the presence of page charges have been sufficient 
deterrent to those without funds to pay.  But in many fields the 
differences between prestige (or at least its proxy, impact) can 
be quite small.  So if you know that your work is not quite good 
enough for the top-ranked journal in your field, you may have 
three or four 'B' rank journals that you would be happy to 
publish in.  In that case the publication charges may play a part 
in making shaping your decision.

This is even before looking at whether there will be a 
relationship between 'prestige' and cost to authors.  I have a 
suspicion that some society publishers are going to be able to 
provide greater prestige at lower cost than some of their 
commercial rivals and so the prestigious 'A' journal in a field 
may be cheaper than the less prestigious 'B' journals!

David

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Anthony Watkinson
Sent: 31 May 2008 04:59
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: universities experiment with paying OA fees

I am glad that David Prosser does some hedging. It is not the 
author who is going to pay. It is the funder or university. Any 
university administered fee will surely result in some 
discrimination unless funding is unlimited. Unlimited funding -- 
the Wellcome situation as I see it is not going to be common, is 
it? Who will discriminate and how? I would love to hear David's 
ideal model because certainly it has yet to emerge in practice. I 
mean this seriously. Many OA evangelists reject the need for any 
explanations of how the totally OA future is going work as far as 
scholars are concerned -- though they aim for a totally OA 
future.

Not all scholars would like their heads of department or (horror) 
the provost's office deciding where they are able to publish. Is 
this what David means by "discussions on campus".

I am not aware that the major OA publishers explain their costs 
in detail and give explanations of why fees have gone up so much.

Anthony