Forwarding from the Open Access Forum. Hope it will be of interest to all.
For the online version of the letter below please see:

<https://arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/380.html>

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

At 02:47 PM 12/26/2003 +0200, Alexei Koudinov wrote:

Dear Colleagues,

I wonder why to institutionalize "open access" journal as the one that
(proposed item 8) "recover costs by charging the author-institution for
each outgoing article they publish" (see
<https://arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/377.html>Draft letter by S.
Harnard).

I lead the journal, <http://neurobiologyoflipids.org/>Neurobiology of
Lipids, that does not charge authors for article publication, and runs at
the annual cost of below the cost of one article at BioMedCentral, BMC
(500$, please note that PloS biology article publication cost is even
higher, 1500$/article). The fee imposed by BMC was the issue near all my
colleagues-scientists on the Editorial Board did not agree with.

In my view the current formulation of item 8 follows the compaign of PLoS
and BMC for aggresive promotion (that has nothing to do with Neurobiology
of Lipids constant growth of subject readership and article access' hits
comparable with the top rated BMC titles) and institutionalization of the
strict definition of Open Access to fit it into their particular
operation/business models.

This compaign in my view exploits (making revenues in case of BMC?) the
average scientific and librarian community member poor understanding of
desktop2internet publishing capabilities. When the community is properly
educated and the end user (not only BioMedCentral) simplicity of internet
publishing operation is realised (like a desktop word processor software,
or e.mail program operation: does anyone need an operator for an e.mail
program or MS Word, 500$ per e.mail preparation/delivery or document
typing?) there may be no need for a part of BMC business, as interested
committed scientists will be easy doing themselves what now is offered by
BMC as
<http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/authors/startajournal>Start-a-new-journal
fare. These journals run at no-monies by scientists (BUT owned by and
profiting BMC) currently compose near 50% of BMC titles.

I do claim that the low-cost technology is available and that the
community just need to be educated about it. When this is achieved
not-for-profit journals will be run with no technical quality compromise
(scholar excellence/quality was always an editorial-not publisher- duty)
by scientists with NO need to "recover their [low] costs by charging the
author-institution for each outgoing article they publish". Such journals
operation may well be supported by small grants (with no budgeting for
<http://www.plos.org/support/launchparties.html>promotional lanch parties
in several countries that multi-million grant to PLoS could itemize) or
Institutional/Library budgets.

"Open access" is ethics, not business model of "charging the author or
institution" for article publication. Failure to appreciate the above in
my view indicate an unfair bias that will be used against Open Access
movement by those opposing it.

The proposed "Item 8" should NOT be incorporated in the proposed "Draft
letter for institutions to sign to implement Berlin Declaration" in the
present form. I request Item 8 and other relevant places to be modified
not to limit the definition of "open access" in favor of current major
players.

As a holiday joy make 3D Virtual Holy Land tour:
<http://www.tourism.gov.il/tourheb/virtual%20tour/map_index2.html>

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Alexei Koudinov
Neurobiology of Lipids
<http://neurobiologyoflipids.org>

Competing interest declaration: I do not have any competing financial
interest. I am a founding, managing and publishing editor of the
Neurobiology of Lipids, an unpaid position. Neurobiology of Lipids (ISSN
1683-5506) has no affiliation with any professional association,
publisher, industry member, commercial enterprise, public, educational or
government organization. The viewpoint presented in the above letter is my
personal view. Also, please see my Open letter on Call to boycott Cell
Press, <http://www.podbaydoor.com/mt/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=1106> .

----------------------------------------------------------
At 12:24 PM 12/25/2003 -0800, you wrote:
>Stevan-
>
>I don't want to reopen the argument about your 5%/95% division, but I don't
>think its appropriate or necessary to use these figures here. How about
>just:
>
>(8) New "open-access" journals recover their costs by charging the
>author-institution for each outgoing article they publish and making
>all published works freely and openly accessible from the moment
>of publication, instead of restricting access to subscribers
>
>(9) For articles for which no suitable open access journal exists, an
>alternative immediate solution to put an end to access denial and
>impact loss is for their authors to self-archive their full-texts online on
>their own institutional open-access websites for all would-be users
>worldwide.
>
>-Mike
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Stevan Harnad" <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>
>To: <SEPTEMBER98-FORUM@LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG>
>Sent: Thursday, December 25, 2003 12:13 PM
>Subject: Draft letter for institutions to sign to implement Berlin
>Declaration
>
>
>> This is the draft of a statement for universities and research
>> institutions worldwide to sign to commit themselves to implementing
>> the Berlin Declaration by providing open access to their peer-reviewed
>> research output. Note that it is not meant to be merely a declaration of
>> solidarity and support for the principle of open access, but an
>> institutional commitment to open-access provision.
>>
>> Comments are welcome. The draft can be revised to incorporate recommended
>> corrections, clarifications or other improvements.
>>
>> --------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Declaration of institutional commitment to implementing the
>> Berlin Declaration on open-access provision
>> http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html
>> and the WSIS Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action
>> http://www.itu.int/wsis/
>>
>> (1) Our researchers are paid (and their research projects are funded,
>> often with tax-payers' money) to conduct research and to publish their
>> findings ("publish or perish") so that other reseachers, at other
>> universities and institutions worldwide, can access, use, build-upon,
>> cite and apply those findings. This is called "research impact". The
>> productivity and progress of research depend on its impact.
>>
>> (2) Research is published in peer-reviewed journals (24,000 worldwide,
>> across all disciplines and languages, publishing about 2,500,000
>> articles per year).
>>
>> (3) Unlike book-authors or journalists, research article-authors do not
>> seek royalties or fees for these writings: They write them only for the
>> sake of research impact. (This is why they and their institutions were
>> always willing, in the paper era, to undertake the effort and expense
>> of mailing out hard-copies of their articles to any would-be users
>> who requested a reprint, and sometimes even to pay page-charges to the
>> journal for publishing the article. Greater research impact means both
>> (i) career advancement, higher salary, more research income, prizes and
>> prestige for the researchers and their institutions and, more important,
>> (ii) greater research productivity and progress, hence greater benefits
>> to the tax-payers who fund the research.)
>>
>> (4) In the paper era, the only way for journals to cover the costs
>> of peer-review and publication was to charge subscription tolls for
>> access: Universities and research institutions paid the tolls so their
>> own researchers could access and use the peer-reviewed research output
>> of other universities and research institutions.
>>
>> (5) No institution could ever afford toll-access to anywhere near all
>> 24,000 journals; and most could only afford a small fraction of them --
>> a fraction that keeps shrinking with rising journal prices, even in
>> the Web era.
>>
>> (6) As a result, it was true in the paper era -- and is still true
>> today, in the Web era -- that for each one of the 2,500,000 articles
>> published yearly, most of its would-be users cannot access it. That
>> means much of its potential research impact is being lost.
>>
>> (7) In the paper era, this impact loss was unavoidable, but in the Web
>> era it is no longer necessary. There are two complementary ways in which
>> all access-denial -- and hence all impact-denial -- can now be eradicated:
>>
>> (8) New "open-access" journals can recover their costs by charging the
>> author-institution for each outgoing article they publish, instead of
>> charging the user-institution for each journal or article they access.
>> (But fewer than 1000 open-access journals exist so far, publishing only
>> about 5% out of the 2,500,000 articles that are published every year.)
>>
>> (9) For the remaining 95%, the articles published yearly in the 23,400
>> toll-access journals, the immediate solution to put an end to access
>> denial and impact loss is for their authors to self-archive their
>> full-texts online on their own institutional open-access websites for
>> all would-be users worldwide.
>>
>> (10) As soon as universities, research institutions and research funders
>> extend their existing "publish or perish" policies from just publishing
>> their research output to also providing open access to it -- via (8), by
>> publishing it in an open-access journal whenever a suitable one exists,
>> and otherwise via (9), by self-archiving all their toll-access journal
>> publications -- the open-access era will be upon us, and research progress
>> and productivity will at last be maximised, instead of needlessly
>minimised,
>> as it is now.
>>
>> Our institution commits its support to open
>> access provision by signing the Berlin Declaration
>> http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/signatories.html and implementing
>> an institutional open-access provision policy such as:
>> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/archpolnew.html
>>