On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 3:43 PM, Couture Marc <marc.cout...@teluq.ca> wrote:
> *MC:* any contribution that will help to answer the following question > “If Green OA goes from 20% to 100%, and if the demise of the subscription > model ensues, when will subscription cancellation begin?” is relevant in my > opinion.****** > I agree. But the discussion here was not about about where along the interval 20% OA to 100% OA to cancel subscriptions. It was about cancelling journal subscriptions because the journals are Green, i.e., because they are among the majority of journals who do not try to embargo OA. ** > > *MC:* We may not like the hypothesis that embargo-free Green OA journals > may be the first to be cancelled, but it is kind of logical, though from a > very limited perspective. > "Logical" would not have been the word I used to describe it! And I have spelled out the reasons it is neither rational nor constructive -- reasons which just require thinking a few steps ahead, exactly as Finch/RCUK failed to do. > *MC:* And it’s a good thing that it has been raised here, in order to > allow for the “OA community” to put the issue on a more general level, like > when Stevan points out that actions or policies which may seem justified > locally, because they allow for short term savings, can be globally harmful > in the long term. > The short-term savings from cancelling Green journals because they are Green are the same short-term savings one can enjoy from arbitrarily cancelling any journal. The difference is that completely random cancellations have no systematic effect on OA: Systematically cancelling Green journals most definitely would. But this systematic longer-term consequence is so blindingly obvious that I can hardly imagine a librarian even contemplating the step unless (like publishers) their only interest was in their own bottom line. And when that bottom line is in conflict with the interests of OA -- which means research and researchers worldwide -- then, again, *exactly* like publishers, the librarians become adversaries of OA instead of allies. (Ironic that it's precisely this sort of narrow self-interest with which librarians so often reproach publishers for libraries' plight...) Stevan Harnad
_______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
