RE: universities experiment with paying OA fees

[<Toby.GREEN@oecd.org>]

Couple of observations:

1. International Organisations (IGOs) like OECD and World Bank 
have in-house "provostial" publishing houses handling books, 
journals and databases. Nothing new about this, some of us have 
been around for decades. We have in-house editors who select what 
is to be published and in what form - this is important from both 
a quality-control aspect and from the aspect of meeting reader 
needs. Some, like OECD, are self-funding (living off what they 
sell), others receive financial support from the parent 
institution. Most IGOs see their publishing arm as a significant 
contributor to the overall mission of the institution and 
absolutely worry about their contribution to the institution's 
'brand'. I'm sure that if IRs are to be successful, they will 
have to morph into some sort of "University Press" with all the 
associated quality controls one would expect from a publisher. 
And I wouldn't be surprised if the resultant entities aren't a 
bit like IGO Presses. But one word of caution: the smaller IGOs 
struggle because they don't have the scale needed to maintain all 
the publishing functions.

2. I've just come back from a trip to Latin America. We have been 
building a dissemination network among the universities there - 
effectively a collection of library consortia. To my surprise, we 
keep being asked if we would publish articles from authors based 
at these institutions on our online platform. Perhaps I shouldn't 
be so surprised. We've got a well-respected brand, we've got an 
online platform and they know we're translating some of our 
content into Spanish and are keen to do more in their language. 
They also know their institutions can't match this.

Toby Green
OECD Publishing

-----Original Message-----
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Joseph J. Esposito
Sent: 06 June, 2008 1:57 AM
To: Karl Bridges; liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: universities experiment with paying OA fees

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>
Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2008 8:40 AM
Subject: Re: universities experiment with paying OA fees

But 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