Actually, there is a decline in the rate of launch of new OA journals;  look
at the start dates in the DOAJ list

Sally

Sally Morris, Chief Executive
Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers
South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 3UU, UK
Tel:  +44 (0)1903 871 686
Fax:  +44 (0)1903 871 457
Email:  sally.morris@alpsp.org
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stevan Harnad" <harnad@ECS.SOTON.AC.UK>
To: <SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU>
Sent: Friday, October 28, 2005 4:54 PM
Subject: [SERIALST] Lord Sainsbury on the RCUK OA Proposal: Drubbing Peter
to Pox Paul

> BioMed Central (BMC) has written a very good reply to Lord Sainsbury's
> recent remarks about the RCUK policy proposal:
>
>    http://www.biomedcentral.com/openletter/20051027/
>
> BMC's point that it is untrue that there is a decline of interest
> in open access publishing is quite correct. Interest continues to rise.
>
> Minor point: Rather than cite over-reliance on Journal Citation Impact
> Factors
> (though there *is* over-reliance on Journal Citation Impact Factors)
> as a "level playing field" matter, disadvantaging new OA journal
> start-ups,
> my strategy would have been to stress the overwhelming evidence of the OA
> Citation Advantage at the author/article level, as demonstrated by the
> within-journal comparisons between what has and has not been made OA
> through
> self-archiving.
>
>    http://citebase.eprints.org/isi_study/
>    http://www.crsc.uqam.ca/lab/chawki/graphes/EtudeImpact.htm
>
> BMC's passage about ignoring the UK Select Committee's impartial advice
> on Open Access Self-Archiving is also very helpful and spot-on (though
> I rather wish -- again a very minor point -- that Matt had called it
> "Self-Archiving" rather than just "Archiving," which always makes it sound
> ambiguous as between OA provision itself and mere preservation-archiving).
>
> It might also have been helpful to point out to Lord S that 93% of the
> journals in the Romeo index have already given their green light to
> self-archiving, whereas it is Lord S who appears to be ambivalent about
> RCUK's proposal to mandate it. Lord S wrote:
>
>    Lord S: "what [RCUK] said effectively is we want you to publish it as
> soon
>    as you can, subject to reaching agreement with the publishers as
>    to when that would be. That seems to me to put researchers in an
>    impossible position, ie, every individual researcher has got to
>    start negotiating with the publisher as to what that means."
> http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmsctech/uc490-i/uc49002.htm
>
> I would say that the one nearer an impossible position is not the
> researcher, but Lord S, who has not understood the RCUK proposal; he has
> (yet again) conflated OA publishing (which is not what RCUK is proposing
> to mandate) with OA self-archiving (of *published* articles), which is
> what RCUK is proposing to mandate. Lord S is (yet again) drubbing Peter
> (OA self-archiving, green) to pox Paul (OA publishing, gold), as he did
> with the Select Committee proposal, which he also misunderstood:
>
>    "Drubbing Peter to pox Paul"
>    Thursday December 2, 2004
>    Guardian Education
>
> http://education.guardian.co.uk/higherfeedback/story/0,11056,1364556,00.html
>
> With about 93% of journals already green on OA self-archiving, Lord S is
> being
> more royalist than the sovereign, more catholic than the pope...
>
>    http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php
>
> The following (*extremely* hirsute) passage from Lord S alas does not
> attest
> to a clear grasp of what is at issue, even when he endeavours to consider
> OA self-archiving separately:
>
>    Lord S: "The question of institutional repositories is a slightly
>    different one because I think there is a role for institutional
>    repositories [SH: So far so good], but in rather specific
>    circumstances, which is there is a whole series of fields of research
>    where the people like publishing their papers and what they are doing
>    before they send them to the journals, and this is a very good way
>    of communication between research communities. The question here
>    is what is the requirement or the desire for people to publish
>    them alongside publishing them in the actual journals? [SH: Lord S
>    seems here both to be conflating (1a) publishing with (1b) providing
>    access to the publication and (2a) pre-peer-review preprints with
>    (2b) post-peer-review postprints] I think that is for individual
>    universities to decide for themselves as to whether that is a cost
>    [SH: Cost? Cost of what? Cost to whom?] that they think is justified
>    subject to whatever agreement is reached with the publishers on what
>    is the proper thing to do."
> http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmsctech/uc490-i/uc49002.htm
>
> Agreement? 93% of journals have already given their blessing to author
> self-archiving. But so preoccupied is Lord S with the costs to and
> of the journal trade that he seems to be missing entirely the fact
> that the RCUK self-archiving mandate is meant to recover a needless
> ongoing cost to the British tax-payer, who funds RCUK research, namely,
> the loss of at least 50% (i.e., about £1.5 billion's-worth) of citation
> impact on the RCUK's annual £3.5 billion investment in research, a loss
> that occurs because currently the only researchers who can access a UK
> research finding are those whose institutions can afford access to the
> journal in which that finding happens to be published. Access denied to
> all the rest of its would-be users.
>
>    http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/28-guid.html
>    http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html
>
> The RCUK self-archiving mandate is intended to make RCUK-funded research
> output accessible also to those would-be users who cannot afford
> the journal in which it happens to be published, so as to remedy the
> needlessly lost usage and impact of UK research findings, to maximise
> their uptake, usage, and applications, and thereby to maximise the
> benefits to British tax-payers resulting from the research that they
> have paid for.
>
> Where do journal-costs and publishing-models figure at all in this
> equation? The transaction seems to be primarily one between the British
> tax-payer and the British research community that it funds to produce
> research, research which is in turn intended to be used and applied for
> the benefit of the British tax-payer, not to serve as a product to be
> sold, as in a supermarket, for the benefit of some other party. Publishers
> certainly add value (and earn revenue) from this transaction too, but
> their retail side-trade surely is not what it is all about!
>
> Surely Lord S is not just our trade minister, but our science minister
> as well. As such, he should stop conflating trade matters with research
> matters, especially when it otherwise entails the tail wagging the dog.
>
> Stevan Harnad
>
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> UNIVERSITIES: If you have adopted or plan to adopt an institutional
> policy of providing Open Access to your own research article output,
> please describe your policy at:
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>
> UNIFIED DUAL OPEN-ACCESS-PROVISION POLICY:
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> OR
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>            a suitable one exists.
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> AND
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