Cornell Task Force: Open Access Costly

-- Library Journal, 1/10/2005

A task force convened by the Cornell University Libraries (CUL) has delivered to its administration a sober assessment of author-pays open access (OA) publishing. Given the number of articles published by Cornell faculty members, the library system could "see its expenditures rise significantly if the library used its current subscription funds to pay for author fees." Instead, the task force predicts both subscriptions and open access publishing will coexist for the foreseeable future, particularly when subscriptions are "administered by scholarly societies, university presses, and academic libraries." The task force was convened by associate university librarian Ross Atkinson and led by John Saylor, director of the Engineering and Computer Science Library. The task force, which plumbed a wide array of sources, met weekly from January through June 2004 and delivered its report and recommendations in October.

While far from a ringing endorsement, the report is also not bad news for OA supporters. It acknowledges the potential of open access to "democratize" access to information. Further, the report may help shift the debate to more practical issues. "Open access should not be regarded as an ultimate solution to the science serials crisis," the task force report stated, "but it can no doubt offer a pragmatic solution in specific cases." The task force acknowledged, however, that the scholarly publishing enterprise is simply too complex for a "blanket approach" to publishing issues. The "pragmatic approach" is to continue Cornell's current "flexible, experimental" course of action.