More on the PRC study of OA archiving and journal subscriptions

Stevan Harnad, President-Elect of the Association of American University Presses (AAUP) on Open Access: An Exchange, Open Access Archivangelism, December 13, 2006. 

Summary:  Sandy Thatcher, President-Elect of AAUP is preparing a white paper on OA and asked about PRC's study "Self-Archiving and Journal Subscriptions: Co-existence or Competition? An International Survey of Librarians' Preferences." The PRC study tried to provide evidence, via simulation and modeling, on whether author self-archiving will cause librarians to cancel journals (because there is no evidence of this yet, and APS and IOPP have both reported that they can detect no correlation). 

A methodological flaw in the PRC study made it impossible to make any relevant predictions because OA self-archiving (green) had been treated as if it were an OA journal (gold), suitable for cancellation. In reality, author self-archiving of individual articles is distributed and anarchic, with no sure way of knowing how much of a journal's contents have become OA, and when; moreover, self-archiving mandates affect all journals at once, roughly equally. So the journal versus journal acquisition/cancellation options presented in the PRC simulations have no bearing on the question of self-archiving and cancellation. 

It is nevertheless likely that self-archiving will eventually induce cancellations, though no one can predict when, and how strong the pressure will be. What is certain is that journals can and will adapt; trying to deny research the demonstrated advantages of OA is no longer an option. Nor is there any need for authors' institutions or funders to pay for OA publication until and unless cancellation pressure makes subscriptions unsustainable; then, journals will cut costs, downsize, and convert to the OA publishing cost-recovery model. Till then, researchers need to provide immediate OA through self-archiving, and their institutions and funders need to mandate it. Journals too, will benefit from the enhanced impact. Ahead of us is a period of peaceful co-existence between mandated OA self-archiving (growing anarchically) and non-OA journal publishing, till we approach 100% OA; after that, the market itself will decide how long non-OA publishing and the subscription/licensing model remain sustainable, and whether and when there will need to be a transition to OA publishing. But meanwhile research will already be enjoying 100% OA, at long last.