Jan: I thought for a long time that conflating the two was wrong, but I have changed my view on that. On Michael Eisen's blog, two comments, one by John C and one by JJ, illustrate the point.
Let's start with JJ, a grad student looking for a postdoc or assistant prof position, but it could also be someone up for tenure. These junior researchers need to know that their personal open-access initiatives will be valued. Universities must show real commitment on their part. If they communicate that library subscriptions will disappear in three years, promotion and tenure committees will be on notice, all faculty will be on notice that the university is serious about the change. John C is a researcher who paid gold open access out of his research grants. The overhead on his grants sponsors his library subscriptions AND he pays the full freight of gold open access. That is not sustainable. Three years is plenty long enough for faculty, libraries, and publishers to adapt to a new reality, and it is short enough for the transition not to impact junior researchers adversely. Stevan will say that gold open access is not necessary. And he is right, but green open access has been moving too slowly and it requires mandates that will be difficult to enforce in the long term. The quality of institutional repositories is sufficient for access to research, but it is not at the level necessary for long-term archiving. For institutions participating in green open access, all the costs of open access are additive to subscription costs. If IRs are the answer, their quality have to improve and that means more resources are required. I don't know what the end result will be. No one can plan a disruptive change. However, I have come to the view that site licenses cause the stasis. Phasing out of paid subscriptions is the disruption that will set everything else in motion. Then, let faculty, students, publishers, libraries, and startups figure it out. The money saved on subscriptions can help smooth the transitory effects and can be invested in open access. --Eric. http://scitechsociety.blogspot.com Google Voice: (626) 898-5415Telephone:    (626) 376-5415 Skype chat, voice, or web-video: efvandevelde E-mail: [email protected] On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 11:44 AM, Jan Velterop <[email protected]> wrote: Eric, Why the second sentence? As long as they require OA, do we care how they spend â or waste â their money? (Except as tax payers, perhaps, but the access issue isn't the financial issue. Conflation of the two has stymied progress in my view. Just as dirigiste solutions have.) Jan On 1 May 2012, at 19:16, Eric F. Van de Velde wrote: How about the following: "Because Open Access (OA) maximises research usage, impact and progress, funders and institutions must require that all researchers provide OA to their published research results. Institutions and their libraries will phase out all electronic journal subscriptions by May 1st, 2015 and invest in OA initiatives instead."  --Eric. http://scitechsociety.blogspot.com Google Voice: (626) 898-5415 Telephone:    (626) 376-5415 Skype chat, voice, or web-video: efvandevelde E-mail: [email protected] On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 8:04 AM, Peter Murray-Rust <[email protected]> wrote: On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 3:25 PM, Jan Velterop <[email protected]> wrote: I would simplify it further: "Because Open Access (OA) maximises research usage, impact and progress, funders and institutions must require that all researchers provide OA to their published research results." Any form of dirigisme as to how this is to be achieved is best avoided. Avoiding prescriptions for the means helps keep the focus on the goal and also leaves the door open for imaginative ways of convincing researchers, funders and institutions, and even of achieving more OA in possibly more effective ways. I support this. A simple sentence powerful and this probably has what we want - like all sentences this may need slight crafting. The reality of the present situation is that we seem to need a mix of strategies. What works for one discipline may not work for another. Things have changed over the last 10 years and we need to look for changing methods, changing finances and changing allies. -- Peter Murray-Rust Reader in Molecular Informatics Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry University of Cambridge CB2 1EW, UK +44-1223-763069 _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal [ Part 2: "Attached Text" ] _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
