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 < 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

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

So the discussion leads to some points: 1. It does not matter who pays. The people pays ultimately through taxes or purchases. It is question of "Pre-Paid" Vs "Post-Paid". 2. There seems no opposition to OA as such. But it is considered at its infancy. We hope some good models will come up in future. But who will bring up these, we are not clear about it. Should we be doing anything about it? 3. Discussion started with general aspects of OA Journals. However business models for Indian journals has come up. I wish to look it under two compartments. "Import" Vs "Export" of Information. We "import" most of the intellectual information we consume. This information is expensive through traditional models. Will it not suit us if this information is available in OA form? Despite natural and logical opposition from commercial interests, we find there are attempts in Westerns countries like UK and US to make public funded research information openly accessible. Should not we seen supporting OA when we would be benefiting from those attempts? Now let us look at the "export" compartment. We also produce information. But the good one is "brain-drained" by getting published outside. We import it along with other information. Whatever is published here, we WANT it to be consulted outside. Well outside people are interested but our distribution network is weak. The end result is that people outside find it difficult to get a copy of our published information. Fortunately, Internet has given an opportunity to distribute whatever we publish. We should use it to expose and "export" our information. The best way is to produce OA Journals. OA journals are showing their worth. If impact factors are any indication [although it has its own drawbacks], Top Indian Journals are available freely over Internet. < Two Indian journals cross impact factor 1.00 in 2004, [NC Jain] http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/aug102005/429.pdf > See also - http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/dec102000/1513.pdf > It would be wrong to believe that OA journals are of low quality. And whatever is in print only or not easily available is not of good quality. You can find plenty of examples of poor quality print only journals as well as very difficult to get. I wonder if MEDLINE was of better quality when it was fee based or now when it is free over net. I use to wonder why a capital country like US is spending huge public money on research and largest libraries of the world. But now I understand it is part of their economy's infrastructure and means to remain leaders in the Knowledge Society. 4. Yes, Institutional Repositories are no substitute to journals. There have to be journal articles to fill the repositories like libraries. 5. Time is ripe for business of publising International OA journals. If we can produce International Journals like BioMED Central / PLoS [ with author pays model] , it could be better profitable venture. After all we have the necessary infrastructure at low rates. After all commercial venture like MedKnow and IndianJournals have come up. But the situation is ripe for bigger plays - It could be Informatics or Google. Interestingly Elsevier has just taken over a less known journal of Indian Rheumatology Association. It would be difficult for an Indian professional society to develop a web-site of its own having all the necessary features like DOIs, OpenURLs, Linking Mechanisms, RSS and other standards. For marketing and brand building, professional help would also be required. --Sukhdev Singh, NIC. http://openmed.nic.in On 24/05/06, sathya wrote:

Some more thoughts on OA Journals.

1. Funding for research always comes from the taxpayer, "through" the Government. Governments don't earn any money on their own. 2. Taxpayer is predominantly business & industry or the consumer. 3. Government pays TO Institute TO author TO publisher is a politically vulnerable model. 4. What matters is not "who pays", but finding a viable and sustainable model. 5. What is not commercially viable is unlikely to be sustainable in the long run. (When I use the word "commercial", I mean commercial activity by both for-profit and non-profit agencies. A professional society may be a non-profit, non-commercial organization. But, its journal publication activity is a commercial activity.) 6. Institutional repositories can not be a substitute to Journals.

Sathya ---------------------------------- N V Sathyanarayana Informatics (India) Ltd Bangalore 560003, India. www.informindia.co.in

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

----- Original Message ----- From: "Sukhdev Singh" To: Cc: "Rajesh Chandrakar" ; Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2006 4:08 PM Subject: 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

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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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http://ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/mailman/listinfo/lis-forum

...

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http://ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/mailman/listinfo/lis-forum

...

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Dear Friends, OA signifies the democratization of knowledge and support a socially responsible way to distribute knowledge. This trend is picking up. A millions of dollars is being invested for content creation. Thsese content may be partly free or patly charged. There have been some palyers behind scholarly communication. Example: Government, societies, Commercial Establishments, Social Set-ups, and Tecnologies. Today also these are the players. Now individuals scholars have to decide when and how to publish and maintain copyright. Same thing is happening in other industries. New players and business are facing mergers and acquisitions. There is stiff competition between Microsoft, Open Source Tools, Google, Yahoo, etc. Suppliers and Publishers are putting wikis, databases, free contents alongwith their priced ones. But I am sure smart and socially responsible will survive. P K Upadhyay http://mcitconsortium.nic.in

Friends:

Dr Kanikaram Satyanarayana asks why should the governments in India and Brazil subsidize the dissemination of research (of learned societies published through their journals). By the same logic one could ask why should governments support research (or for that matter higher education) at all?

Most research published in most Indian journals, irrespective of whether the journals are published by academies, learned societies, goverment departments or private companies - is supported by the government. As research is incomplete till the results are made public, it stands to reason that if we support performing research we must also support its dissemination through publication in peer reviewed journals. That is why governments in poor countries support both performance of research and publication of the results. That is why the Wellcome Trust is ready to pay publication charges (author side fee) for papers resulting from their grants.

There is also the point that although the journals may be published by scholarly societies/ academies, papers may be written by non-members. And most of the authors would have received public support either in the form of salaries or research grants.

There is another reason why it is in public interest to facilitate free flow of research information. We support science because we believe it is good for the people. And science cannot be performed in an information vacuum. As Newton said long ago, we see further because we stand upon the shoulders of giants. Meaning that we are able to advance scientific knowledge by pushing the frontiers because we have the benefit of the knowledge built by other scientists recorded and readily available to us. It is to make the literature of science readily available to all our scientists, we need to make them freely available on the Internet. So even those who are unable to take a paid subscription can have access to the information published in a journal.

It is fallacious to think that everything should have a price tag and nothing should be free. It goes against the Gandhian ideals of Trusteeship and Antyodaya. Why would MIT, cambridge, make more than two-thirds of its course material free on the Internet through its Open Course Ware programme? And why would many other universities as far away as in China and Japan follow the MIT model? Why would the Department of Space provide free transponder space for education and rural development initiatives? Because the pursuit of public good activities is a mark of civilized society.

Finally, if we really had insisted all along on a viable business plan, much of Indian science would have found it extremely difficult to survive at one stage or the other. Fortunately for us, both the founding fathers of modern Indian science and the the political leadership were sagacious enough to realise that things do take time to stabilise.

Subbiah Arunachalam

----- Original Message ----- From: "Kanikaram Satyanarayana" To: "sathya" ; Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2006 4:25 PM Subject: Re: [LIS-Forum] Open Access Journals?

...

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

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