This argument strikes me as very... 20th century. I can see no reason why a "paper version" is somehow more easily accessible or more permanent than an electronic version. If SAGE declared bankruptcy tomorrow and sold all of their copyrights to a holding company, your papers would quite literally disappear. It is only legally available through the publisher, so if the publisher disappears, your papers disappear with them. In contrast, online journals are part of the public internet, which is archived and re-archived in a ridiculous number of places. Very little on the internet these days happens "without a trace."
I have more faith that my blog, which I know is currently copied and indexed in its entirety by at least 2 independent archival websites, will be available in 50 years than anything held by SAGE. Our writing in journals is ultimately controlled by publishers, and if it was ever in their financial best interest to close up shop and deny access to our writing, they would. And if you think the paper version somehow insulates you from this risk, 1) paper can still be hard to find; if you've ever gone on a hunt to locate something published more than about 40 years ago, you know what I'm talking about and 2) in 20 years, I doubt any of our journals will produce paper copies anymore anyway.
And if your paper was taken down because an open online journal disappeared, you could just repost it somewhere else. If your paper was taken down by the publisher, you have already signed away all your rights to it – it really is "gone". The only reason to take such a risk is if you have faith that the publishing industry's interests match your own. If you don't believe that, journals with openly licensed articles would be very attractive indeed.
As for the contention that "maintaining large databases of papers" is expensive, my blog approaches a hundred thousand visitors/year – where many images have larger file sizes than journal article PDFs – and this costs me about $10/month. For the amount of downloading our articles get, bandwidth and hosting for a single journal worth of articles are not even remotely expensive. What is expensive are the people. If you think copy editors, layout editors, advertising people, course buyouts for editors, etc. are worth the price we pay to lose the rights to our own writing, that's fine, but let's call a duck a duck. Blaming the cost of the technology just ejects people from the discussion that aren't informed about technology costs, which ultimately slows the progress of such debates.
-rl
From: Phillips, Nelson W [mailto:n.phillips@IMPERIAL.AC.UK]
Sent: Monday, April 08, 2013 3:09 PM
Subject: Re: Interesting that the Journal of Business Inquiry is an open access journal with no submission fee...
Just to be clear, the journal in the email below is the Journal of Business Inquiry (JBI) not the Journal of Management Inquiry (JMI). JMI is published by Sage and is a traditional academic journal. And, I would like to point out, at JMI we do not charge authors a submission fee or a publication fee although there is a fee if you want open access to your article. And the reason for this fee is simple: the cost of publishing is not insignificant nor is the cost of maintaining large databases of papers and other support services. The process of publishing a quality journal is complicated and requires a lot of support and technology. The money to produce a quality journal has to come from somewhere. Furthermore, as an author, the problem with publishing on what is really just a website is that your paper may simply disappear without a trace one day. There is no paper version and the only electronic version is available on their website. Should they decide to take it down, your work is gone. This is more akin to a working paper series than a true journal.
Professor of Strategy and OB
Imperial College Business School
Journal of Management Inquiry
Hi everyone,
In light of the recent discussions of the supposedly high costs of scholarly publishing and making journals open-access, I wonder who pays for JMI (see below), and how much it really costs... Also, I wonder if this means authors get to keep (at least more) of their copyrights. Is JMI trying to be a pioneer? Interesting!
Best,
Marc
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Journal of Business Inquiry | The Journal of Business Inquiry is an open access, double-blind peer-reviewed refereed journal that provides a forum for scholarly research in economics and finance that is clearly applicable to business and related public policy issues. It is a JEL classified journal. This classification provides an important stamp of approval on the journal and allows greater accessibility to its articles through the American Economic Association's Journal of Economic Literature program search system. The Journal is published by the Woodbury School of Business of Utah Valley University and does not charge any submission or publication fee. The Journal focuses on all fields of economics and finance. Papers from other related macro and micro fields impinging on business and policy towards business are also welcome. These include applied economics, finance and decision theory. The editors welcome ideas and proposals for guest edited special issues. For further information, to view a sample copy, and for submission details, please visit the Journal's web page at www.uvu.edu/woodbury/jbi. | | | Amir Kia Professor of Economics, The Wallace R. Woodbury Professorship in Economics & Editor-in-Chief The Journal of Business Inquiry Finance & Economics Department Utah Valley University Orem, UT 84058-5999 Tel.: (801) 863-6898 E-mail: akia@uvu.edu Website: www.uvu.edu/profpages/akia | | | | | |