SUMMARY: Some publishers are offering a high-priced Paid-Publisher-Archiving (PPA) alternative to free Author-Self-Archiving (ASA), and trying to redirect the OA mandates that have been proposed by the US, UK and EC toward mandating OA through PPA instead of ASA. If research institutions and funders have the spare cash to pay whatever publishers ask today for PPA without having to take it away from research allotments, then the outcome (100% OA) is welcome and optimal for all. But if they do not have the spare cash (e.g., because it is already tied up in paying subscriptions today), then it makes more sense to mandate ASA, as proposed by the US, UK and EC, and let the market decide whether and when PPA ever becomes necessary, and if so, at what price. The cash may not be needed at all, if subscriptions hold; or the subscription cancellations themselves will release the cash needed for redirection to PPA. Right now, for example, the PPA asking price is bloated with the cost of the print edition. Surely today's author-institutions wishing to provide OA for their own publication output are not to be burdened with paying for their articles' print runs too, particularly when those are already being paid for by institutional subscriptions today, with no evidence of subscription decline as a result of self-archiving?
It is a very canny gambit on the part of publishers to offer a maximally priced
Paid-Publisher-Archiving (PPA) alternative to free
Author-Self-Archiving (ASA), and to focus their anti-mandate efforts now on trying to
redirect the OA mandates that have been proposed by the
US,
UK and
EC toward
mandating OA through PPA instead of ASA.
It can even be stated (
again) that if research funders feel they have the spare cash -- and researchers are ready to believe that that cash would be redirected from elsewhere, and not from their research allotments -- to pay whatever publishers ask today (or a capped amount that the funders impose) for PPA, then the outcome (namely, 100% OA) would be welcome and optimal for all.
But if the research funders do
not have the spare cash
today to match and duplicate the funds that are already changing hands
today in the form of annual institutional subscriptions, paid by institutional libraries to publishers -- and/or if the prospect of committing to the payment of such sums
today would result in the funders balking at the adoption of OA mandates at all
today -- then it would make a good deal more sense for funders to insist,
today, on the ASA mandate they have already proposed, rather than the publishers' counterproposal of a PPA mandate, and to
let the market decide empirically, at its own tempo, whether ASA indeed generates institutional subscription cancellations.
For if mandated ASA
does generate substantial institutional subscription cancellations, then those very same substantial institutional subscription cancellations will constitute the institutional windfall savings out of which PPA costs (again determined by the market and not by a-priori fiat) could be paid quite naturally, without taking any money away from research funding.
And if mandated ASA does
not generate substantial institutional subscription cancellations, then there is no need for PPA.
This is an empirical question. Neither its probability nor its price are decidable a-priori, by fiat.
The thing to bear in mind is that publication costs today are
bloated -- by the costs of continuing to provide the paper edition, for which there is still hefty subscription demand, as well as the deluxe online edition, and many other extras that subscribing institutions are still happy to pay for today. If/when subscribers should ever cease to want those extra features, and are satisfied with just the author's free, online, refereed final draft, then the cost of PPA can only shrink, and may well reduce to just the cost of implementing peer review.
Publishers are basically asking funders, today -- who have every right to insist on immediate OA for the research they fund, today -- to pay for the entire status quo (print edition and all), today, even though there are plenty of institutions paying for it all already, and even though
no one knows whether they will be any less willing to pay for it once the entire system is supplemented, thanks to the ASA mandates, by a free online version of the author's refereed final draft for those who cannot afford all the rest!
But, to repeat, the need for OA would be fully met if funders (and institutions) found the extra cash to mandate and pay for PPA just as surely as the need for OA would be met if funders (and institutions) simply mandated ASA.
Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum
