Recently, a statement of librarian Rick Anderson has made the rounds:
if I know that a publisher allows green deposit of all articles without embargo, then the likelihood that we’ll maintain a paid subscription drops dramatically
Of course, when you can get the same content for free, why should you pay for it? Apparently, Mr. Anderson does not value the work a publisher has put into their version of a scholarly article enough to pay for it, at least not compared to the author’s copy in the ‘green’ OA repository. Scientists have long asked what this supposed value actually is, so scientists and libraries seem to agree that whatever it is publishers add to a scholarly article, it’s not worth a whole lot. Now, Joe Esposito chimes in and also agrees:
Now you can find an article simply by typing the title or some keywords into Google or some other search mechanism. The Green version of the article appears; there is no need to seek the publisher’s authorized version.
This must be a first: librarians, scientists and publishers all agree, there is no need for the publisher’s authorized version. Then please remind me, why do we need publishers? What is it they are doing, if nobody can put a finger, let alone a price tag on it?
Apparently, not only in academic publishing people are asking similar questions: in this interview, Tucker Max writes that brand-name publishers “are all essentially dead companies walking, milking their backlist cash cows for as long as they can until they disarticulate and die”. The same can be said of legacy academic publishers.
P.S.: I think Stevan Harnad might have two answers: 1. to put their stamp of approval on the paper and 2. without publishers no green OA and without 100% green OA no fair gold OA. WRT 1, I’d argue that there is no evidence of journals differing in the quality of the papers they publish. WRT 2, I’d argue that green OA is not the only way to a modern scholarly infrastructure for text, data and software.
Agree with this in it’s entirety. The ironic truth is, so do publishers. If they could justify the value they add, why would they need embargo periods? The longer they say they need an embargo period, the more they’re implicitly saying that they add less, or an inferior product, as they can’t justify the price tag compared to the free version.
Agree, made analogous remarks in relation to Gold OA What is an author buying from a Gold OA publisher. Agree also with your pov on Green OA. Personally, I doubt that even the usual article format will survive after the coming change.
The real value of a publisher’s imprint on an article lies in the appreciation of it in the scholarly ego-system, and as a defence against accusations of self-publishing, which would be seen as vanity publishing by many. Ignoring the fact that most scholarly publishing is vanity publishing of sorts, by which means researchers advertise their scholarly prowess (which enables them to gain tenure, obtain grants, win prizes, etc). It’s human, but if the brownie-point greed is not changing, scholarly publishing won’t change in a hurry. Brownie-point greed is imposed, or at least encouraged, by the scholarly ego-system itself. Publishers are only catering to that brownie-point greed. Impact factors help them. There’s good business in it. Nothing wrong with self-publishing, though, especially not if the published material contributes to the building of the edifice that’s human knowledge and understanding. ‘Gold’ OA is self-publishing with outsourcing (and paying for) some publishing services. ‘Green’ OA is pretend self-publishing, free-riding on the traditional system. True and honest self-publishing – possibly with arranging peer review oneself and make the reviewers and their comments public, so as to make it all credible – may be the answer. But it may mean foregoing the vanity rewards that come with having one’s article published in a journal, particularly one with a respectable impact factor. Don’t hold your breath.
Very well put, Jan! In essence, that’s what I meant with regard to hypothetical answer #1 from Stevan “stamp of approval”. The link in my reply to Stevan’s hypothetical answer contains all the evidence required for the dismissal of legacy journals, especially those “hi-IF” journals and their ‘peer-review lite’ (i.e., acceptance rate jumps from 8% to over 40% once the ex-scientist handling the manuscript sends it out for actual review).
Your argument is precisely the reason we wrote our paper: https://www.frontiersin.org/Human_Neuroscience/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00291/full