Why Journal Cancellations are a Long Way Off But Open Access Through Self-Archiving Is Not -- Stevan Harnad Stephen Clark 27 Feb 2003 13:43 UTC
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 13:30:04 +0000 (GMT) From: Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk> Subject: Why Journal Cancellations are a Long Way Off But Open Access Through Self-Archiving Is Not Why Journal Cancellations are a Long Way Off But Open Access Through Self-Archiving Is Not The picture becomes clearer every day. Self-archiving momentum is growing: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/tim.xls http://oaister.umdl.umich.edu/o/oaister/viewcolls.html but it is also becoming apparent that it is a mistake to expect that this will lead to accompanying serials reductions or cancellations. The reason is quite clear too: Open access is growing anarchically, and depends entirely on the pace at which authors and their institutions self-archive their research output. But even as the proportion of the total refereed journal literature (20,000 journals) grows, and even as it nears 100% (still nowhere in sight, but already reachable overnight, if we simply all reach for it), there will not be (and cannot be) a parallel growth in toll-access cancellations. The reason is the anarchic way that self-archiving grows: Unlike BOAI-2 (the creation and conversion of open-access journals), which proceeds through the 20K *journals* one by one, BOAI-1 (self-archiving) proceeds through the annual 2,000,000 *articles* published in those 20K journals, one by one. This means that the total contents of any particular journal are only becoming openly accessible gradually, whereas any thought of cancellation depends on having the open-access version in toto. This gradualism is not at all a bad thing. Although it provides no direct relief for the library serials crisis, it does provide growing open access for researchers. And it gives the journals a long lead time to adjust to the new reality, with no need to panic or to appear to be trying to block what is so obviously in the best interests of research and researchers. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/unto-others.html Stevan Harnad NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at the American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01 & 02): http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/september98-forum.html or http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html Discussion can be posted to: september98-forum@amsci-forum.amsci.org See also the Budapest Open Access Initiative: http://www.soros.org/openaccess the Free Online Scholarship Movement: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/timeline.htm the SPARC position paper on institutional repositories: http://www.unites.uqam.ca/src/sante.htm the OAI site: http://www.openarchives.org and the free OAI institutional archiving software site: http://www.eprints.org/