I think Sally Morris is on somewhat stronger ground than Stevan allages -
although the suggestion that widespread use of OA repositories will
ultimately harm the subscription sales of journals is only a prediction, it
is afairly logical one. If an item can be obtained free of charge, for how
long will people go on buying it? On the other hand, it seems likely that
any such effect will occur gradually over a period of years. This gives all
parties concerned time to adapt. OUP and Springer are each starting to do
so, and Bo-Christer Bjork from Finland has also recently made a proposal for
transitional arangements that look as if they could work (see
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=event_international_0605#Spks). There
are potentially greater problems for learned society publishers, for whom
Sally speaks, than for larger publishers. A current JISC-funded project
being undertaklen by Mary Waltham is investigating possible future business
models for them; I look forward with interest to reading her report.
Fytton Rowland, Loughborough University
Received on Tue Aug 23 2005 - 17:12:59 BST