Stevan is absolutely right on this point, and it
behooves publishers who operate hybrid journals
to make their finances transparent. Otherwise,
there will always remain the suspicion that the
publishers are double-dipping.
Sandy Thatcher
At 7:40 AM -0400 10/25/13, Stevan Harnad wrote:
<http://exchanges.wiley.com/blog/2013/10/07/open-access-in-the-uk-will-gold-or-green-prevail/#comment-1094488522>Bob
Campbell wrote on the Wiley blog:
"<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/1061-.html>Stevan
accuses me of much conflation yet he himself
conflates APCs and subscriptions when commenting
on double-dipping. APCs are not paying for the
'same articles' paid for by subscriptions.
Publishers have always charged separately for
different services/products. For example, a
medical journal may charge a pharmaceutical
company for reprints, advertising space and
subscriptions. These are priced separately and
charged separately, and accounted for separately
in the publisher's financial management of the
title. The pharmaceutical company does not
demand that the cost of buying advertising space
is offset against any library subscriptions."
Bob Campbell defends double-dipping by citing
journal charges for the purchase of reprints,
advertising and subscriptions. That's all fine.
But what we are discussing here is the cost of
publication, not of extra products or services.
Worldwide institutional subscriptions pay the
cost of publication (in full, and fulsomely). It
is not at all clear what extra product or
service is being paid for when an author pays
for hybrid Gold OA (for the paper he has given
the publisher, for free, to sell).
Of course it's an extra source of revenue to the
hybrid Gold publisher to force the author to pay
that extra money (for whatever it is that they
are paying for). And let there be no doubt that
the payment is indeed forced (if the hybrid Gold
publisher embargoes Green). Is the extra
"service," then, exemption from the
publisher-imposed Green OA embargo?
(Note: If the publisher is among the
<http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/statistics.php>60%
who endorse immediate Green OA, then none of my
objections matter in the least, and I couldn't
care less if the publisher earns some extra
revenue from those authors who are silly enough
to pay for hybrid Gold OA when they could have
had the same, cost-free, by just providing Green
OA.)
For the publisher who embargoes Green and then
pockets the extra revenue derived from hybrid
Gold, over and above subscriptions, without even
reducing subscription charges proportionately,
is indeed charging twice for publication, i.e.,
double-dipping (and offering absolutely nothing
in return except freedom from the publisher's
own Green OA embargo).
Subscriptions pay the cost of publication. Print
reprints are an extra product. And adverts are
an extra service. But hybrid Gold OA is merely
fool's gold, if paid unforced. -- And if forced
by a publish embargo, there is a word to
describe the practice, but I will not use it, as
a publisher has already once threatened to sue
me for libel if I do So let's just call it
double-dipping, with no extra product or
service...
Stevan Harnad
--
Sanford G. Thatcher
8201 Edgewater Drive
Frisco, TX 75034-5514
e-mail: [email protected]
Phone: (214) 705-1939
Website: http://www.psupress.org/news/SandyThatchersWritings.html
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/sanford.thatcher
"If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying."-John Ruskin (1865)
"The reason why so few good books are written is
that so few people who can write know
anything."-Walter Bagehot (1853)
_______________________________________________
GOAL mailing list
[email protected]
http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
