Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
the certification function had emerged, the scenario would result in order.
Probability of dominance: Medium
Benefits of OA: Fully achieved
Preservation: Repositories
Cost: Potentially lower than present
Result: Order
Scenario 4: subversion
In Scenario 4 widespread manuscript archiving leads over time to large-
scale cancellation of subscriptions to journals. As in Scenario 3, no
funding is made available for author-side payments and so journals go
out of business and the certification provided by the combination of
peer review and journal brands is lost. In this scenario no new suitable
mechanism of certification emerges. Although the benefits of OA are
realized, at least in theory, the lack of certification in the corpus of
scholarly literature becomes an increasing problem, with readers having
to spend more time evaluating what they find online. This problem is
exacerbated for non-expert readers (lay consumers or those new to the
field), who, without the benefit of established brands, find it even more
difficult to ascertain what is trustworthy. The result is a chaotic
environment for scholarly communication, and, while in theory the
benefits of OA would be achieved, in practice the lack of
trustworthiness of the literature would nullify any benefit. Similarly,
while direct costs in the system might be reduced, each article would
once again be likely to appear in multiple repositories. More
consequentially, the increased time required to read and evaluate the
literature would cause a drop in researcher productivity and a resultant
increase in costs overall, given that the cost of search and reading is
almost eight times that of publishing and distribution (RIN, 2008).
Probability of dominance: Medium
Benefits of OA: Not achieved?
Preservation: Repositories
Cost: Higher than present?
Result: Chaos
