[Vwoolf] R: Open Access

[June Cummins]

In the United States, academic publishing is not financed by public 
money except in cases where the press hosting the journal is in a public 
university and even then, very little of the press's finances are coming 
from "the public."  Academic publishing is paid for through 
subscriptions, which are owned either by individuals or more often by 
universities. Perhaps this basic difference in academic publishing is 
the reason U.S. scholars don't understand European methods of making 
scholarship available.

June Cummins

On 11/24/14, 4:39 PM, Francesca wrote:
>
> Dear professor Hussey,
>
> I dare answer your question even though I do not belong to the 
> academic world; I just have a degree (I wrote a dissertation about The 
> Voyage Out) and a PhD (again about travel literature) but I am a 
> librarian who works in Italy, at the Library System of the University 
> of Trento.
>
> One of my professional tasks is related to Open Access. I will not 
> bother you all advocating for OA (there are a lot of reliable websites 
> you can read in order to get the information you may be interested in) 
> but I will just add some words about your remark:
>
> >>journals that give their content away for nothing
>
> OA journals are peer-reviewed journals which do not give away 
> **their** content for nothing (I am highlighting "their" because the 
> content's rights should not be considered as "the publisher's", but 
> should be retained by the author...).
>
> These journals are just based on a different economic model.
>
> Research outputs (articles) should not be financed more than once by 
> public money. There is no reason whatsoever for publicly financing a 
> research project at the begining, then selling the output to a 
> commercial publisher, which must be re-paid again by libraries 
> (subscriptions) to enable researchers and students access the article.
>
> In OA, Universities and researchers pay just once (with research 
> grants) for a paper to be published. After that, nothing more is due 
> to the publisher; the paper goes through the journal's normal peer 
> review process and the article is then freely and openly available 
> because it has already been paid.
>
> It is so sad that after eleven years from the Berlin Declaration there 
> should be still so many misunderstandings and biases about Open 
> Access. I do not ask you to adhere to OA movement of course, but I 
> would consider myself professionally satisfied if an unbiased 
> knowledge of OA principles were slowly achieved.
>
> Sincecerly yours (and apologizing for my English),
>
> Francesca Valentini
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *Da:*Vwoolf [mailto:vwoolf-bounces+frvln=hotmail.com at lists.osu.edu] 
> *Per conto di *Mark Hussey
> *Inviato:* lunedì 24 novembre 2014 22.53
> *A:* VWOOLF at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
> *Oggetto:* [Vwoolf] Open Access
>
> Do those of you likely to publish in US-based journals (such as, for 
> example, /Woolf Studies Annual/!) have any concerns about the UK 
> government's forthcoming requirement that to be counted you may only 
> publish in journals that give their content away for nothing?
>
>
>
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-- 

________________________________________
June Cummins, Associate Professor
Director, Graduate Program
Department of English and Comparative Literature
San Diego State University
jcummins at mail.sdsu.edu
SDSU Children's Literature Program
childlit.sdsu.edu <http://childlit.sdsu.edu>

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