On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 11:18 AM, Rick Anderson <rick.anderson@utah.edu> wrote:
 
if I know that a publisher allows green deposit of all articles without embargo, then the likelihood that we'll maintain a paid subscription drops dramatically 

Rick Anderson has made a public announcement that he may think serves the interests of University of Utah's Library and its users: 

It does not, because it is both arbitrary and absurd to cancel a journal because it is Green  rather than because their users no longer need it" About 60% of subscription journals are Green and there are no data whatsoever to show that the percentage of the contents of Green journals made OA by their authors is higher than the percentage for non-Green journals -- and, more important, the percentage of articles that are made OA today from either Green or non-Green journals is still low, and the sample is likewise arbitrary.

But more important than any of that is the gross disservice that gratuitous public librarian announcements like that do to the OA movement: We have been objecting vehemently to the perverse incentive Finch/RCUK have given publishers to adopt or lengthen Green OA embargoes and offer hybrid Gold in order to get the money the UK has foolishly elected to throw at Fool's Gold unilaterally, and preferentially.

Now is it going to be the library community publicly notifying putting publishers on notice that unless they adopt or lengthen Green OA embargoes, libraries plan to cancel their journals?

With friends like these, the OA movement hardly needs enemies.

May I suggest, though, that such postings should not go to the GOAL, BOAI or SPARC lists? Please keep such brilliant ideas to the library lists.

And please don't reply that "it's just one factor in our cancelation equation." There's no need for the OA community to hear about librarians' struggles with their serials budgets when it's at the expense of OA.

Stevan Harnad

---
Rick Anderson
Assoc. Dean for Scholarly Resources & Collections
Marriott Library, University of Utah

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