Re: universities experiment with paying OA fees

["Joseph J. Esposito" <espositoj@gmail.com>]

I believe Karl has this exactly right.

I would phrase it this way:  Access to information is not a major 
problem most of the time; access to vehicles of certification can 
be a large problem (because certification is selective).

Authors thus need access to the brands of certification, which 
are currently controlled mostly by publishers.  Brands are an 
aspect of an attention economy.  We have learned to recognize 
Coca Cola and Harold Varmus, as well as The Lancet and Nature. 
Peer review in itself does not confer certification; peer review 
in the context of respected brands does.

An institution that wants to modify this situation needs to 
develop or assert a brand for certification.  Theoretically, 
Harvard's OA repository would associate the Harvard brand with 
the articles deposited there.  This is what I call "provostial 
publishing," in which the provost chooses the authors (by 
choosing the faculty).  But not all provosts are dealt the same 
hand; what works for Harvard won't work for less prestigious 
institutions.

The more rational policy (yes, this is my hobbyhorse) would be 
for universities to increase their support for their university 
presses, which combine the selectivity of editorial review with 
the imprimatur of the institution.  I know of no university that 
is pursuing this strategy (though some universities are very 
proud, and rightly so, of their presses).

Joe Esposito

----- Original Message ----- From: "Karl Bridges" 
<kbridges@uvm.edu> To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>; "Joseph J. 
Esposito" <espositoj@gmail.com> Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2008 
8:40 AM Subject: Re: universities experiment with paying OA 
feesBut people miss the point...Regardless of how OA changes the 
economics of publishing (or what form it comes in) -- it is a 
dead letter until such time that universities accept OA , on the 
same broad basis that they accept "conventional" publishing, as 
counting towards promotion and tenure.

Unless that is in place academics, especially younger academics, 
have no incentive to publish in OA journals because it won't 
count towards their tenure!!!

Karl Bridges
University of Vermont


Quoting "Joseph J. Esposito" <espositoj@gmail.com>:

> Sandy,
>
> In your list of possible sources for OA fees, you left out
> corporate sponsorship, as in "This article brought to you by the
> R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company."  The trouble with free is that it
> potentially turns all communications into a third-party marketing
> mechanism.
>
> Joe Esposito