Anti-Green OA propaganda?
January 11, 2011 2 Comments
I shall present this without comment for now:
“The second model is known as the ‘Green Road’. It might be described as “no one pays” and thus is unlikely to be sustainable. The basic idea is that in response to the demand for public access, research funders mandate grantees to post articles for free access, on publication or after an embargo period. There are two obvious problems with this policy. Making available copies for free access will undermine the economic base of the publication. If much of the contents of a journal, albeit in an inferior version, can be found over the internet within, say, six months of publication why should a library continue to subscribe? In addition, once the publisher taken the article through a process of selection and improvement supported by peer review, it has a copyright interest in the final version. Not sufficiently widespread yet to undermine paid circulations, the Green Road could become a serious problem: we could land up with several versions of an article available on repositories with no proper stewardship, and libraries will be more inclined to cancel subscriptions.”
Bob Campbell, Senior Publisher and Cliff Morgan, VP Planning and Development – Wiley-Blackwell
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder – how many verions of Mozart can you buy? But people differentiate still? They can ascertain the quality of versions, as to be interested in the version, you must ergo, have an interest in the topic.
The problem is shelves are less tidy (but surely the most recent submission is the best version), but more open content meams more on the shelves.
A bigger, fuller, dirtier shelf, or expensive minimalism?
I expect dirtier shelf will attract some comments