From: Frederick Friend <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2013 10:03:58 +0000
I echo Nathan Hosburgh's note of caution about this move by Sage. As
well as the points Nathan makes, we must remember that publishers are
competing for market share, especially at a time of change in the
market. To me the $99 offer reads like a traditional loss-leader to
make an early grab for authors and establish Sage Open's position in
this market. Obviously we would all like to see competition in the
level of APCs but I shall be very surprised if $99 sets a standard or
is maintained for more than a year or so.
Fred Friend
Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL
http://www.friendofopenaccess.org.uk
-----Original Message----- From: Hosburgh, Nathan
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2013 1:02
Subject: RE: Sage Open price now $99
Regarding the comparison with PLOS:
- PLOS charges an author fee of $1,350
- they offer partial/full fee waivers in certain circumstances
- they are a non-profit and their main revenue source is from publication fees
http://blogs.plos.org/everyone/authors/
Sage is a for-profit publisher and I imagine their main revenue source
is subscriptions. Sage Open is one OA journal from a publisher of
many non-OA journals. Sage publishes more than 700 journals spanning
the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Science, Technology, and
Medicine. Only a few of these journal titles appear to be full Gold
OA. Sage offers 'Sage Choice', an OA option for authors who wish to
make their research articles freely available upon publication - this
appears to be available for any Sage journal.
"For the majority of journals published by SAGE the fee per article is
$3,000USD/£1600GPB in Science, Technology and Medical fields, and
$1,500/£800 in the Humanities and Social Sciences."
http://www.uk.sagepub.com/sagechoice.sp
So, it seems Sage is extending this one OA journal with very
reasonable publishing fees as a sign of goodwill/PR tool. The $3,000
article fee would probably be a better comparison with the $1,350
charged by PLOS since they publish STM material.
Regardless, this is interesting news - thanks for posting.
Nate
Nathan Hosburgh
Electronic Resources Librarian
Assistant Professor
Montana State University Library
Bozeman, MT 59717-3320
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-----Original Message-----
From: Heather Morrison [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2013 10:42 AM
Sage Open has reduced their open access article processing fee to $99
per article. The announcement is posted here:
http://www.uk.sagepub.com/aboutus/press/2013/jan/24_jan.htm
This is not the first OA publisher to come out with prices in this
range. PeerJ, established by Peter Binfield (formerly PLoS ONE), has
open access fees on a lifetime membership basis starting from $99.
This raises some interesting questions. For example:
What is the real cost of publishing in an open access online
environment? Sage OPEN and PeerJ are both commercial companies. If $99
is sufficient to cover the costs of coordinating peer review and
publication, why would anyone pay even the $1,350 charged by PLoS ONE,
never mind the $3,000 plus charged by some of the traditional
publishers under hybrid arrangements?
Is this an indication that transitioning to open access will indeed
open up the inelastic market for scholarly journals to competition?
best,
Heather G. Morrison, PhD
Freedom for scholarship in the internet age
http://pages.cmns.sfu.ca/heather-morrison/2012/12/12/freedom-for-scholarship-in-the-internet-age-post-defence-version/
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