New open access publishing model praised for audacity, but sustainability concerns remain @insidehighered

"A recently proposed model on open-access publishing has drawn praise for rethinking the roles institutions, libraries and professional organizations play in promoting scholarly communication, but can its collaborative structure be sustained? The proposal envisions stakeholders forming partnerships, each handling one or more of the duties of funding, distributing and preserving open-access scholarly research -- specifically in the humanities and social sciences. To fund the new structure of scholarly communication, institutions would pay into a centralized fund that awards grants to promote research through a competitive application process ... The long-awaited white paper, released last month, was written by Rebecca R. Kennison and Lisa R. Norberg, the two library administrators behind K|N Consultants. It has so far attracted reactions that tend to fit the same mold: full of praise for the overall vision, and full of questions about the working details.  In a hypothetical case, a made-up scholarly society that faces declining publication and membership revenue is awarded an annual grant of $275,000; $100,000 of that money is earmarked for the society’s flagship journal, which becomes open to anyone, and $50,000 for a smaller journal. Another $100,000 funds the society’s book series, “which has been recast as an innovative digital initiative that will be built on a new multimodal publishing platform,” and the final $25,000 goes toward attracting younger scholars.  While the $275,000 is dwarfed by the $660,000 the society once earned from journal subscriptions, nearly all of that money was invested right back into maintaining the journals. And with a library partner handling online hosting and a university press responsible for print subscriptions, the society is able to cut some of its costs.  The proposal doesn't envision a massive influx of new funds, but rather a redistribution of how universities now spend their funds. What institutions would pay in the new model depends on several factors, including the number of full-time students, faculty members and researchers on their campuses. As Rick Anderson has pointed out in a Scholarly Kitchen blog post, that formula produces some odd results. Princeton University, for example, would contribute only $39,875 a year, compared to Arizona State University’s bill of $366,890.  Bryn Geffert, librarian of the college at Amherst College, suggested that stakeholder buy-in -- especially among institutions -- could be the model's greatest challenge. 'I think this proposal will succeed or fail largely based on whether universities and colleges pony up the kinds of funds that the professional organizations can then tap into,' he said. 'If they put up that kind of money, then entrenched stakeholders will move, because they will follow the money' ..."