Green OA and its Repository Infrastructure are Permanent, not "Transitional"
Amsciforum 2013-09-04
Summary:
In his interview with Richard Poynder, Cameron Neylon, as always, makes many valid and astute points. But there is one thing about which I think he is quite profoundly mistaken: CN: "While we can generate wider access with relatively little transitional costs through repository-mediated OA this won’t help to bring down subscriptions costs." Apart from the fact that lowering subscription (or publication) costs and providing open access to publisher research are not the same thing at all (and that the urgent and overwhelming priority of Open Access is Access), I think Cameron underestimates the profound causal connection between them.
The primary purpose of repository-mediated OA (Green OA) is not to serve as a transition to Gold OA publishing: it is to provide OA. But in providing the infrastructure for providing OA, the global network of Green OA repositories also provides the means of downsizing publishing to just the cost of managing peer review (which peers provide for free). All the rest of the costs of pre-Green-OA publishing (access-provision, archiving) are -- post-Green -- offloaded and distributed across the global network of Green OA repositories (while the print and online editions and their costs can be jettisoned completely).
That is why the... [cont'd]