Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Wednesday, January 11, 2006

ALPSP survey on self-archiving and journal cancellations

The ALPSP has launched a Library Survey on Self-Archiving and Journal Cancellation. From the introduction:
As you may be aware, some publishers are becoming concerned that if self-archiving of postprints, or even preprints, of journal articles becomes sufficiently widespread, this may lead to a decline in usage at journals’ own websites, and that this in turn may lead to cancellations. In order to understand whether or not our fears are well-founded, we would like to understand more about the process by which you make the decision to cancel journals, what the crucial factors are, and how you would rank them in importance, both now and in the future.

OA advocate Les Carr has criticized the survey for question-begging wording on some questions, confusing structure, and a scope limited to librarians, who are only part of the journal-cancellation process. Today I realized that I'd been following the controversy but hadn't yet blogged the survey itself. Sorry for the delay.