[Vwoolf] R: Open Access

[Caroline Webb]

I think what's meant by "research outputs should not be financed more than once by public money" is not that the journals/presses are public but the academic research is.  European universities, like nearly all in Australia and like many but very much *not* all in the US, are public institutions funded in whole or in part by the government (in Germany it's just become whole, in Australia it's a rapidly decreasing part), and most of the grants available to individual researchers are also government-funded.  Hence the public is paying, in the form of taxes, for the academics at those publicly-funded institutions to perform research.  The theory then is that that research should be openly available to the people who paid for it.

Caroline Webb
The University of Newcastle, Australia

From: Vwoolf [mailto:vwoolf-bounces+caroline.webb=newcastle.edu.au at lists.osu.edu] On Behalf Of June Cummins
Sent: Tuesday, 25 November 2014 9:48 AM
To: vwoolf at lists.osu.edu
Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] R: Open Access

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<mailto: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<mailto:jcummins at mail.sdsu.edu>
SDSU Children's Literature Program
childlit.sdsu.edu<http://childlit.sdsu.edu>
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