[LIS-Forum] Fwd: failure delivery

[Mailing List Manager]

Date: Sat, 8 May 2004 05:58:07 +0100 (BST)
From: "[iso-8859-1] Subbiah Arunachalam" <subbiah_a at yahoo.com>

> Friends:
>
> Here is a brief exchange betwen Gene garfield and
> Stevan Harnad. Enjoy reading it.
>
> Arun
> [Subbiah Arunachalam]
>
>  [Moderator's Note: To save iterations, my reply
>  follows below, immediately after Gene's posting --
>  S.H.]
>
> > Stevan Harnad wrote:
> >
> > >   The rate of new OA journal start-ups is not
> > likely to increase
> > >   substantially, because the literature is
> already
> > journal-saturated,
> > >   and there are few new journal niches. Most OA
> > journal growth is hence
> > >   likely to come from the conversion of existing
> > TA (toll-access)
> > >   journals to OA, in one of three ways: (1) The
> > journal remains TA,
> > >   but makes its online version OA. (2) The
> journal
> > abandons the TA
> > >   cost-recovery model and adopts the OA
> > (author-end) cost-recovery
> > >   model. (3) The journal's editorial board and
> > authorship -- hence,
> > >   effectively, its title -- defect to an OA
> > publisher.
> >
> > I am surprised to hear you say this Steve. It
> flies
> > in the face of
> > experience. You should re-read Derek Price's
> > statements about the growth
> > of invisible colleges.
> >
> http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/lilscibi.html
> >
> > The latest techniques in publishing make it all
> the
> > more likely that
> > new journal start ups of all kinds will continue
> to
> > occur. I have known
> > dozens of pioneering editors who started new
> > journals because they could
> > not get a professional society or a private
> > publisher to act. Ironically
> > it made several of them quite wealthy because
> > neither the slow moving
> > societies or the conservative publishers could not
> > foresee the potential.
> >
> > At one time the president of Gordon and Breach
> told
> > me he could start
> > a journal with 50 subscribers. And Robert Maxwell
> > jumped in to publish
> > journals like Tetrahedron because he could find a
> > brilliant editor.
> >
> > Today any free spirit could start a new journal.
> > Some will fail and
> > some will succeed. The process of "twigging" as it
> > was once called
> > is inevitable.
> >
> > Eugene Garfield
> >
> >     [Stevan Harnad's reply: I defer to Gene
> > Garfield's far broader
> >     knowledge and experience on the subject of new
> > journal start-ups
> >     (though it would be nice to see the actual
> data
> > on new journal
> >     start-ups for, say, the past 20 years, perhaps
> > subdivided in terms of
> >     hybrid vs. online-only -- as well, of course,
> as
> > a count of how many
> >     journals, new and old, hybrid and online-only,
> > went belly-up within
> >     the same period, after what interval). My
> point,
> > however, was about
> >     OA (Open Access) journal start-ups. Around
> 1000
> > journals (5%) out
> >     of a total of about 24,000 journals are OA
> > journals today, and the
> >     question was about how quickly that
> *percentage*
> > can be expected to
> >     rise (via either new journal creation or old
> > journal conversion or
> >     both). I hold by my prediction that it will be
> > very slow, whereas
> >     self-archiving, which is already at around 20%
> > right now, can rise to
> >     include at least all the articles in the 83%
> of
> > journals that have
> >     already given self-archiving the official
> green
> > light, or even to
> >     100%, virtually overnight. I think the
> potential
> > growth rates via
> >     these two roads -- gold and green -- differ by
> > at least an order of
> >     magnitude. -- S.H.]
> >
> > ------------
> > Eugene Garfield, PhD. email
> > garfield at codex.cis.upenn.edu
> > tel 215-243-2205   fax 215-387-1266
> > President, The Scientist   www.the-scientist.com
> > Chairman Emeritus, ISI  www.isinet.com
> > home page: www.eugenegarfield.org
> > Past President, American Society for Information
> > Science and Technology
> > (ASIS&T)  www.asis.org
>
>
>
>
>
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