---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2011 23:41:34 -0600

I would ask Chris if he thinks that the benefits of co-existing OA and
SB business models will be of equal benefit to both large and small
publishers. Or will the largest publishers come to dominate OA
publishing just as they have SB publishing? And if the latter is the
case, does the high profit margin realized by the largest publishers
really redound to the overall benefit of the scholarly communication
system, or not? How much will quality drive the system, as opposed to
sheer market power?

Sandy Thatcher



> From: "Armbruster, Chris" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2011 00:20:08 -0800
>
> Joe, Jan,
>
> What is maybe not well understood (yet) is the (potentially strong)
> complementarity between open access and subscription-based publishing
> for a system of scholarly communication in which the published output
> continues to grow substantially (i.e. 3% p.a. because of publish or
> perish, new players/countries, internationalisation, multi-authorship
> etc.). Open access has opened up new sources of revenue. At the same
> time it has a viable business model for the bulk publishing of the
> scientific record, probably at significantly reduced cost. The
> players/ publishers who understand/exploit this new complementarity
> will be the ones that thrive (including a maintained or improved
> profit margin). Of course, this may sound like bad news to some
> advocates of open access as well as of big deal publishing, but from
> the point of view of scholarly communication and the communities this
> is all good news.  From here onwards, it is about optimizing the
> synergy (i.e. positive network effects) of OA and SB publishing in the
> interest of digital scholarly communication (i.e.
> authors/readers/clients/customers).
>
> Regards,
>
> Chris
> _____________
> From: LibLicense-L Discussion Forum [[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of LIBLICENSE [[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: 19 November 2011 02:30
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Future of the Subscription Model
>
> From: Jan Velterop <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2011 19:38:11 +0000
>
> Joe,
>
> It is of course very difficult to see ahead even five years.
> Personally I think that author-side payment OA publishing will be much
> wider spread, but then again, ten years ago I thought that the
> majority of primary journal articles would be open access by now.
>
> There is no doubt that author-side payment OA publishing will face
> economic challenges. We all do. It's the nature of the economic system
> in which we live. There will be competition, but I doubt that there
> will be more commoditisation than there already is in the traditional
> subscription-based publishing model. (I read 'commodities' as services
> or goods without qualitative differentiation). Competition doesn't
> necessarily lead to lower quality. The level and quality of the
> services that OA journals offer won't always be the same, and
> accordingly, fees won't always be the same. Brands, i.e. publishers'
> and editors' reputations, will still matter in the 'ego-system' that
> is science. It's even likely that a small number of high-end journals
> will survive in the subscription model. There will always be people
> who need the (perception of) public approbation that having their
> articles accepted by such journals entails. It will be the new 'vanity
> publishing'.
>
> It may well be that OA publishing services move to areas with less
> expensive labour. A lot of publishing already has. Much of the
> marking-up (xml-coding) and back office operations of the largest
> publishers takes place in India nowadays. And they do a sterling job
> in India, on the whole. Their brain power is no less than in the US or
> Europe and their education levels have been increasing fast. Besides,
> global academic communication is not tasked with keeping jobs in the
> US or Europe.
>
> As for the rigour of peer review (much of it a myth anyway), that may
> well be reduced in the process. Rigour made sense in an era when the
> sums invested in the whole publishing system - typesetting, paper,
> printing, warehousing, distribution, library storage, lending,
> redundancy (many copies), etc. - were high, per article. Generation
> (beyond what the author delivers), distribution and storage have
> become relatively cheap, and there is no need for much redundancy any
> longer, either. Add to that the 'overwhelm' of the amount of articles
> published, and the quality of individual articles in the ocean of
> material becomes less important. Computer-aided analysis of the
> literature will become the norm (is already in some areas). We all
> know how to deal with outliers in graphs, and outliers in the
> literature will be dealt with in a similar way. They are either of
> extreme interest (rare), or noise (common). Besides, the emphasis will
> shift to data, away from narrative, making the outlier analogy even
> more pertinent.
>
> As far as I'm concerned, the case for low cost and less qualitative
> hangup is not a negative one. The positive side of the ledger is
> global and open access, easy re-use of findings, and with all that,
> increased speed of scientific discovery.
>
> Jan Velterop
>
>
> On 18 Nov 2011, at 04:22, LIBLICENSE wrote:
>
> From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
>
> Jan,
>
> The author-pays model is indeed a splendid one and has succeeded
> beyond the expectations of all but a few visionaries.  What do you
> think it will look like in 5 years?  The number of services for
> author-pays continues to grow.   Perhaps they will all survive;
> perhaps there will be even more.  But they have certain economic
> challenges ahead, namely, that they are in a commodity business where
> it will be very hard to make money when this market gets more crowded.
>  Will the $1,200 author fee drop to $1,000 under market pressure?  Why
> not to $800?  Why not $600?  Some people working in this field believe
> that $600 is breakeven.  I don't know about that, but suppose it's
> true.  Doesn't this mean that all these competitors move out of the
> First World to get less expensive labor? And if prices still have
> downward pressure, what kind of temptation will there be for reducing
> some of the services?  Will there be even less rigorous peer review?
>
> Because of the monopoly nature of copyright (subject to exceptions
> under fair use), publishing is inherently not a commodity business.
> But author-pays moves in the direction of a commodity business.  We
> really don't know what it will look like when it matures, but there is
> a case to be made that it will be low cost and low quality.
>
> Joe Esposito
>
> On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 7:09 PM, Jan Velterop <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>>  Rick describes it extremely clearly. There is no, and cannot be,
>>  competition between publishers on price, because their journals
>>  (the primary research ones - the vast majority) are monopoloid.
>>  Where publishers compete is where there is choice. They compete
>>  for authors and their papers, and authors are the only ones in
>>  the system with a realistic choice (albeit that even that choice
>>  is heavily influenced by peer-pressure).
>
>  >
>>
>>  That is why, in spite of possible practical issues, the principle
>>  of author-side payment of the 'service' of publishing is so
>>  attractive, from a functional market point of view. And
>>  author-side payment of the service of publishing also makes open
>>  access possible without any financial repercussions for the
>>  publisher. And open access has so many advantages for academic
>>  research, that it can be seen as very research-unfriendly to
>>  stick to subscription models for the sake of tradition or of
>>  cold-water-fear of change, or simply because of inertia.
>>  Wholesale change cannot be effected overnight, of course, but
>>  companies like Springer, for example, demonstrate that moving
>>  into open access publishing makes business sense as well as
>>  academic sense.
>>
>>  Jan Velterop