Capita selecta on scholarly communication
presented by
Leo Waaijers,Manager of SURF Platform ICT and Reseach,
to the 2004 Winter Meeting
‘Economic Models for Scientific Information, Production and Distribution’
of ICSTIParis, January 15-16, 2004.
• Philosophy
• Who’s responsible?
• Managerial concept
• Generic innovations– Repositories– Open Access
• To conclude
Philosophy
Scientific progress thrives on the symbiosis of creation & communication
Upon hearing that he was awarded the Nobel Prize with Brenner and Horvitz, Sir John Sulston is quoted as saying that:
"The worm [C. elegans] worked so well because the community held an ethos of sharing - just as the public genome projects have - from the beginning. We gave all our results to others as soon as we had them. From sharing, discovery is accelerated in the community. Research is hastened when people share results freely."
(The Guardian, UK, October 8, 2002)
Who’s responsible?
If communication and creation are equally important, management is equally responsible for both.
Managerial concept
If managers are prepared to accept their responsability, is there a managerial concept to rely upon?
Knowledge cycle(Nonaka, Senge, Prahalad, Weggeman, Jacobs e.a.)
create publish
organize study
Change drivers
1. Serials crisis
2. Information & Communication Technology
3. Knowledge management theory
Concatenating 1980-2000
New approach
Content management is a
• strategical
• integral
• critical
aspect of a knowledge intensive organisation
New roles
Open Access
Comparing the Subscription Model and the Open Access Model in
scholarly communication;
Similarities and Differences
Similarities
• Identical products: Edited en refereed scientific articles bundled by subject in journals.
• Permanently archived (e.g. through KB).
• New journals never have an impact factor.
• Publishing costs institute’s money.
DifferencesSubscription Open Access
Medium p-only or p+e e-only
Copyright assigned exclusively to publisher
remains with author
Business paradigm
monopoly market
Access proprietary toll way open on the internet
Payment flat fee in advance or, recently, access price per article
publication price per article or, recently, flat fee in advance
Production process
identical, except for the licensing/subscription complexities which are void in Open Access
Price per article
publisher type Big commercialSmall
commercialNon profit BioMed Central
price/(volume x subscr.) € 2.000 € 750 € 350 -
# articles/volume 150 100 75 -
price/(article x subscr.) € 13,3 € 7,5 € 4,7 -
# subscriptions 750 500 300 -
price/article € 10.000 € 3.750 € 1.400 $ 525
accessible by (10.000 per subscription)
7.500.000 5.000.000 3.000.000 ∞
An example
For the year 2002 Wageningen University & Research Centre paid M€ 2.4 to get access to the most important scientific information.
In an Open Access world (and publishing all its articles through BMC) Wageningen would have had to pay M$ 0.7* to get access to all scientific information published worldwide.
* 1417 articles x $ 500
Price differences
may be caused by:
• paper ↔ electronic,
• monopoly ↔ market,
• commercial ↔ non-profit,
• tollage ↔ toll-free.
Food for thought
"We believe there is a 50% risk of a change in the model ten years from now."and
"BNP Paribas expresses its concern regarding the company’s (= Reed Elsevier’s) current subscription based access, as compared to the newer and more successful article-fee based open access system."
‘Professional Publishing’, 200 pp, BNP Paribas, October 2003 http://www.newratings.com/new2/beta/article.asp?aid=341832
More food for thought
• US Sabo Bill 1 ("Public Access to Science Act")• US Sabo Bill 2 ("Public Access to Science Act")• UK Parliament, Science and Technoloy Committee• Report on Changing Research Practices in the Digital Inform
ation and Communication Environment (Aus. Gov.)• AUS$ 12 million for managing university information• The Wellcome Trust Statement• The Berlin Decaration• The Budapest Open Access Initiative
• Result: Directory of Open Access Journals (697 OA journals)
To conclude
The transfer to Open Access is a• win (scientists)• win (society)• win (universities/institutes)• win (libraries)• win (publishers?)• lose (shareholders)step.
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