Re: "There are sooo many subscription journals occupying the same niche - sometimes partially, but often enough completely - and yet they are all subscribed to, widely or narrowly, but economically sufficiently, on the strength of the adage that "you can't afford to miss anything in your discipline"."
Are many of the new commercial journals actually 'subscribed to' or are they added to existing packages in hopes they will capture sufficient market share to continue? ... my assumption is that the concept of 'loss leaders' is NOT operable for society published journals. Dana L. Roth Millikan Library / Caltech 1-32 1200 E. California Blvd. Pasadena, CA 91125 626-395-6423 fax 626-792-7540 dzr...@library.caltech.edu<mailto:dzr...@library.caltech.edu> http://library.caltech.edu/collections/chemistry.htm From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Jan Velterop Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2012 2:21 AM To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Cc: LibLicense-L Discussion Forum Subject: [GOAL] Re: Further Fallout From Finch Folly "...they [start-up subscription journals, or as Stevan calls them "bottom-rung journals"] were not subscribed to by institutions if there was no empty subject niche they were filling, nor before they had established their track-records for quality." Where has Stevan been the last 4 decades? The niche for new subscription journals always was (and for new journals in any model probably still is) defined by a surfeit of articles looking for a journal to submit to, not by an empty subject niche. There are sooo many subscription journals occupying the same niche - sometimes partially, but often enough completely - and yet they are all subscribed to, widely or narrowly, but economically sufficiently, on the strength of the adage that "you can't afford to miss anything in your discipline". And 'quality' has never been more than a vague and nebulous concept with little predictive value when applied to the vast majority of journals. (Not that I think that matters. Articles of true significance, in whichever journals, mostly drift to the surface anyway. A good, and citable, article in a low Impact Factor journal is not so much dragged down by that low IF, but pushes the IF up, if IFs are what tickle your 'quality' fancy.) In the 'green' scenario, a move to 'gold' is supposed to happen only after everything is 'green' OA and subscriptions are not possible anymore. The then sudden need for OA journals is, in that scenario, only to be satisfied by a veritable avalanche of start-up 'gold' journals, the credibility of which won't be assessable. And they will all feature on Beall's list. How much better to gradually build up a 'gold' OA infrastructure, while suspect new OA journals can be caught, or while Darwinian selection to weed them out can take place. That can be - fortunately, is being - done alongside 'green'. Remember, while 'green' doesn't include 'gold', 'gold' *does* include 'green'. I regard a Darwinian 'weeding' of non-credible journals (including those who Beall classifies as 'predatory') a wholly realistic scenario. Authors submitting to - and paying for - journals without duly checking the journals' credentials are probably too gullible to expect to produce much worthwhile publishable science anyway. It's a harsh world, the scientific one. Jan Velterop
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