Re: [LIS-Forum] Open Access Journals?

Here is my input to Rajesh comments:

But, I don't see any future of this model in India as I have doubt that Indian Govt or the organization concerned would say, "O.K. Go ahead author. We will pay your expenses to the publisher for your publication".

Let us see the whole picture. A scientific paper is not a fiction. It is an outcome of some research work. These works are funded directly or indirectly by Govt. Agencies. Add salaries of the scientists / scholars and the infrastructure cost. It is a huge investment. What all I am arguing is that it makes sense for Govt. / Funding agency to spend extra bit to ensure that publication of the research output [article] is Open Access. Doesn't it cost to subscribe traditional journals? Then why not to Pre-Pay in sponsoring OA publications? It is not that it is only OA Journals [like from BioMed Central / PLoS] charges the author [ or indirectly its funding agency]. Perhaps everybody knows that authors have to pay even to the traditional model journals. "Page Charges" is the term used by number of foreign Journals. Take a look at some examples: http://www.asabe.org/pubs/29_Jour_Manuscript_Submission.html http://www.jcn.or.kr/home/journal/pagecharges.asp?globalmenu=13 http://www.biophysj.org/misc/ifora.shtml http://www.awma.org/journal/faq.htm http://www.amstat.org/publications/jasa/index.cfm?fuseaction=ifa It appears that there are norms to reimburse these "Page Charges" if an article is accepted in a journal of repute [having minimum impact factor of one]. I do not see any reason why Govt / Funding agencies will refuse to bear the cost of excellent work. Doesn't it sponsor conferences or depute its employees to such events in India or abroad? As already pointed out by Dr. Satya, if other countries can sponsor publications, then why can't India. Moreover it is not necessary for Govt Agencies to fund directly the authors. It can help sponsoring Professional Bodies to establish OA Journals. To some extend it does so by allowing its scientists / professionals to be on journals' editorial boards. And let us not forget the opportunities of establishing Institutional / Central self-archiving repositories. Which may be the short-cut for India to OA its intellectual output. --Sukhdev Singh On 24/05/06, Rajesh Chandrakar wrote:

My comments as follows:

----- Original Message ----- From: "sathya" To: "Sukhdev Singh" ; Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2006 3:51 PM Subject: Re: [LIS-Forum] Open Access Journals?

...

...

From another approach, for OA Journals, three models can be considered.

1. Author pays model. This is like your pre-paid model. The funding agency funds author. He has the freedom to chose the journal. Examples: Biomed Central, Hinawi (Egypt), PLOS, Springer's Open Choice.

Author pay model is supported by UK Govt. JISC (funding agency) pays to the publisher for author's publication. Similarly in US, there funding agency does for their authors. But, I don't see any future of this model in India as I have doubt that Indian Govt or the organization concerned would say, "O.K. Go ahead author. We will pay your expenses to the publisher for your publication".

...

2. Sponsor pays model. This model is similar to Yahoo and Google model. The circulation of scientific literature is considered low compared to popular literature. Hence, the commercial viability of this model is still a question mark. Some publishers have successfully used a mixed media approach -- Print+E where print generates the required revenue for sustenance and the e-version is hosted free for all. MedKnow, Indian Academy of Sciences, etc. A large no. of peer-reviewed open access journals are following this model. If the print users migrate completely to online and stop subscribing to print version, this model may suffer a collapse.

I am agree with this. In such situation, I don't see any future of this model. And they have to find any alternative.

...

3. Directly funded by funding agencies. For all practical purpose, this has to be the Government of the country. You have INDMED model. Publishers are not much concerned about revenue loss as their print revenues should be still stable enough. You also have Brazillian model like SciELO, completely funded by The Government there.

This is also one of the dark area of Indian journals, except the area like medical and engineering. Unless the society/publisher itself come forward to bear the cost of its publication.

...

More models may emerge. From a business model perspective, OA domain is still very nebulous and experimental and is still far away from providing an alternative to the traditional scholarly publishing model (Library-pays-by-budget-Model!).

I also believe, some more new models will appear in future.

With regards,

Rajesh

...

Sathya -------------------------- N V Sathyanarayana Informatics (India) Ltd Bangalore 560003, India.

FREE! World's largest portal for 3000+ Open Access Journals http://www.openj-gate.com

----- Original Message ----- From: "Sukhdev Singh" To: Sent: Monday, May 22, 2006 5:24 PM Subject: Re: [LIS-Forum] Open Access Journals?

...

What I can understand from your email is that you want to say again that someone has to pay for the open access - be it the author, publisher or employer / funding agency of the author.

But same is also true in "Traditional Model" or Closed Access. In the traditional / subscription based model also the Governmental Agency / Funding Agency pays subscription fee to acquire / subscribe the journals into their Library for its employee / scholars to "consume" literature before they can "produce".

Let us remember one thing - in academic domain - both the consumers and producers are the same - the scientific / academic community. They consume literature to produce literature. And this circle is ensured with the help of public money in some way or the other.

Let me introduce two terms for the business models of the Open and the Closed Access.

"Pre-Paid" for Open Access Publishing - The funding agency Pre-Pays for the Consume-Produce Circle by spending on the publication of the research results which it has been funding. This payment has to be made only once for all members of the scientific community.

"Post-Paid" for Traditional Publishing - The funding agency does not pay an extra bit for the research funded by it. The authors after utilising the public money for carrying out research, get the results published in traditional journals. No payment is required for publication but the authors surrenders all rights of their paper. The best papers most often are published in foreign journals. Later on - the funding agency - makes the journal available in its library after paying subscription cost. In case of foreign journal it has to shell out foreign currency to get back the results of even that work which it originally funded. Multiple payments are required to be made if the govt. / funding agency has multiple libraries spread over a geographical area. Even for digital copies / version the licence fee would be in proportionate to the number of end - users.

It can be easily seen that "Pre-Paid" model makes more sence for research funding agencies.

So if it costs to publish science - then why not to adopt "Pre-Paid" model?

--Sukhdev Singh, NIC. http://openmed.nic.in

--------- On 20/05/06, Chandrima Roy wrote: Based on my understanding, discussions and as per the details given by Peter Suber on http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm

Can we summarize the points as under? - Features of Open Access:

A) Free for User i) Users are free to quote or refer the text ii) They are free to download iii) Users are free to add the downloaded text to their archive iv) As Online Access Literature is free of most copyright and licensing restrictions, no permissions are required to make the information freely available on users' platform, from any other platform

B) Authors/ Publishers have to bear the cost i) As an Author, if one has information but cannot pay, then? Can he look for subsidy? ii) A Publisher, who is either Commercial or Governmental needs to fund the project. So, the finance will come from where? a) Excess charging of Print Version? (That is possible in case of established journals only) b) Subsidy? (Again available to established journal only) OR c) Advertisements? (Again depends upon the Journal Standard)

Chandrima Roy

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

---

...

...

...

Date: Thu, 18 May 2006 14:14:20 +0530 From: Sukhdev Singh < http://ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/mailman/listinfo/lis-forum esukhdev at gmail.com

...

Who bears the cost of the author's intellectual inputs?!!

The same should bear the cost of author's publication.

What is reported in scholarly journals? -- Research output. Who does that research? -- Scientists / Scholars.

And Scientists / Scholars get salary for that. They need infrastructure to work in. They work on Research Projects that cost money .

Who bears all the cost?

Publication costs are just a fraction of the total cost of the research output. So it makes sense to spend a bit extra to expose the research results, gain maximum impact of it and build ground for further research.

So funding agencies ( Govt . or Others) need to spend little extra to publish the research / project outcome which they sponser . Public funding agencies have their publication wings - they just need to allow free / open access to their publications. Atleast to their online versions. Indian Council for Medical Research is an example which provides free access to their journal - Indian Journal of Medical Research.

Well there are other models as followed by BioMed Central and PLoS . Advertising revenues could be other.

Don't we have Free-to-Air TV Channels? Hey! Do we pay for listening to FM Radio Channels? - Private or Public.

I would suggest -

--All publications consuming public money to produce should be publicly accessible - at least their online versions.

--All publicly funded research should be mandated to be open-archived by the author with in a time frame.

--All teaching / reseach institutions should set-up their institutional repositories.

-- Sukhdev Singh, NIC. http://openmed.nic.in http://openmed.nic.in

Date: Thu, 18 May 2006 02:18:16 -0700 (PDT) From: ranjit dharmapurikar < http://ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/mailman/listinfo/lis-forum d_ranjit at yahoo.com

...

Dear Sir, You have asked about the cost of open source journals. who will bear the cost. Of course, the publisher, agency , person who is putting the journal on the net is required to bear the cost. Keeping the facility of open source journals is a way of an advertisement. Generally what I have observed that these open source journals are very old. Whenevr they found that there is not demand for such articles then they declear it as an open source journal. At least with this open source journals users will learn and will come to know that such titled journals are available. So it is a way of an advertisement. What I think. Like out dated goods are sold by maximum discount for attracting the customers towards new and fresh product. The same story can be applicable with open source journals R.G. Dharmapurikar

_______________________________________________ LIS-Forum mailing list LIS-Forum@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in http://ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/mailman/listinfo/lis-forum

_______________________________________________ LIS-Forum mailing list LIS-Forum@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in http://ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/mailman/listinfo/lis-forum

_______________________________________________ LIS-Forum mailing list LIS-Forum@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in http://ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/mailman/listinfo/lis-forum

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------- Rajesh Chandrakar, Commonwealth Professional Fellow Scientific & Technical Officer

INFLIBNET (INFormation and LIBrary NETwork) Centre An IUC of University Grants Commission Near Gujarat University Guest House, PB No. 4116, Navrangpura, Ahmedabad - 380 009, India

Tel. +91-(0)79-26305971/ 8528/ 4695(O), 26873805(R) Mobile: +91-9898087422

Fax: +91-(0)79-26300990, 263007816

E-mail: rajesh@inflibnet.ac.in; rchandrakar@gmail.com Website: http://www.inflibnet.ac.in ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------