Re: [LIS-Forum] Open Access Journals?

24 May 2006

      I suspect the model III being followed in India and
Brazil may not be a long term solution. In the current
globalized scenerio, there is no reason why Govt (in
the case of IndMed, the Indian Council of Medical
Research) should subsidize the dissemination of
research of learned societies published through their
journals. Our idea behind supporting this initiative 
primarily was provide a window (through the web) to
researchers in India and abroad who often compalined
about the near-inaccessibility of Indian literature. 

Soon, we will probably have a hard look at the
existing journals being covered in the IndMed to
assess their 'utility' to weed out those that are
hardly consulted. In phase II we would encourage the
other journals to set up their own web sites (if they
do not already have) and may be provide linkages
through the IndMed database. 

In the long run, only those Indian journals which
publish 'useful' information and have a viable
business plan will survive.

Satyanarayana
K. Satyanarayana
Sr Deputy Director-General &  
Editor, Indian Journal of Medical Research
Division of Publication & Information
Indian Council of Medical Research
Ramalingaswami Bhawan
Ansari Nagar
New Delhi 110029

a few and then perhaps encourage 
--- sathya  wrote:
...
...
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.
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.
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.
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!).
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 <
...
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
...
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
http://ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/mailman/listinfo/lis-forum
produce should be
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
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Re: [LIS-Forum] Open Access Journals?

Kanikaram Satyanarayana