John Willinsky, Stanford University
KU Union, February 19, 2009
Not a dogmatic open access advocate, more of a "free to read" or even just an increased access supporter (the 99 cent Apple example applied to articles).
Articulated the numbers problem. No one knows how many journals there are, let alone how many OA journals exist. He postulates that there are many more than are identified (which is certainly true in my experience).
By getting involved in publishing, libraries radically lower the threshold for publishing a new title. Previously, it was nearly impossible to convince a society or publisher to start a new journal. Lower threshold means freedom to think and deviate from dominant norms (used the example of early feminist journals). This means of publication also means that it is simple to distribute more content, e.g.- data sets, and that page counts and space limitations lose their meaning.
With journals, price is not necessarily an indicator of quality. It's that the commercialization of academic journal publishing created price stratification that has nothing to do with content. He thinks most major publishers (there are really only majors left, Sage, Wiley, Elsevier, Springer, et al.) are nearing the 'flipping' point, which means they will embrace skewed models of open access which will still wipe out library budgets. Libraries would essentially subsidize open access, which is a societal good, but not sustainable post-flip. Basically universities would still pay, even if it's called "author" pay.
Pointed out that in industry, the employer owns the intellectual assets created by employees. That does not apply in academia (the "academic exception"), where the creator owns copyright (and then gives it away to a publisher more often than not). With a university mandate, however, as KU is considering, one can require authors to deposit it with the university before assigning rights to a publisher. He pointed out that faculty (he used his own school at Stanford as the example) can be enthusiastic about the principle, but have no idea about how to realize it (they think online is good enough).
As an educator, he feels strongly that the provision of information via open access enhances all levels of education in the country (used the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy citations in Wikipedia as his example), and that our level of education is related to our democratic society. This isn't just about library or university budgets.
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