I think there are separate process going on. The open access initiative is a separate force as we have agreed before. Nonetheless the continuing profits of multinational publishers are having a continued impact on the ability of Libraries to provide access to information.
What is particularly galling is the fact that anecdotal and publisher evidence [suggests] that refereeing standards are declining (see the JAMA Conference proceedings) and that intellectual usage in contrast to hits has not been proven to have risen greatly per scientific article. In Australia the need for quantitative returns in the Higher Education Research Data Collection means that the publish or perish is getting worse and firms like Taylor and Francis are benefiting from this in the print environment. The whole issue is about affecting the branding and accreditation factors in the scholarly communication sense. Open archive initatives can make significant inroads in the "secondary literature" as we have found here, but the major task is to impact upon the personal and institutional structure of scholarly publishing. I think this is where the next SPARC initiative will come from? Certainly our Academics from certain budget discussions here and I know in several others are pretty cheesed off with the big publishers - largely because of the cancellation factor I admit. The ALPSP study revealed the startling difference as Academic as author and as reader. The crucial issue here is the process of advocacy and the power or otherwise of Librarians to be able to influence Academics-the mice aspiring to be rats syndrome! In fact in some ways the emergence of the institutional E-press through the E-prints repositories may prove a more effective political weapon with University Administrators who are looking at it from the institutional branding and marketing prospect. Hopefully we will get there in the end! -------------------------------------------------------------- Colin Steele Director Scholarly Information Strategies Division of Information W.K. Hancock Building (043) The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 Australia
