From: "Pikas, Christina K." <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 2015 11:48:10 +0000

Jan,

That is definitely an interesting thought. Holding aside the issue of
page and image charges some pay-walled journals charge, I think there
are two logistical issues that would require very careful handling.

First, it’s my understanding that some portion of the overhead fees
levied on grants or contracts to research institutions are used to
support library services. There would have to be careful accounting to
lower those fees by the amount raised through these charges to avoid
double dipping and while still paying for journals that are needed for
consumption but not dissemination of the institution’s work as well as
paying for general library operations (ILL, reference, etc).

Second, the administrative paperwork to manage such a system would be
burdensome. I find it difficult to track all the peer reviewed journal
articles my lab publishes and the annual number is well less than a
thousand. If we were talking about my entire parent institution, that
would be maybe on the order of tens of thousands. That’s tracking by
the author’s reported affiliation – presumably ORCID will help.
Tracking to grants is getting better, but some work is attributable to
multiple grants… whoa.

It might work better in a corporate research lab?  Where there’s more
strict controls?

Christina Pikas
(not speaking for my employer)



From: Jan Velterop <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 20 Jul 2015 20:21:49 +0200

I’ve been thinking about how to level the open access/paywall playing
field for authors (see below). I’ve meant it to be of interest to
librarians. What I suggest may already be done in places; I’m just not
aware of it. If it is being done already, I would appreciate it if
that information was shared, together perhaps with an assessment of
its success (or failure).

———————

Early career researchers are often reported to express the view that
they face a dilemma. Submit to – and hopefully publish in – an open
access journal, with possibly a relatively low impact factor, or in a
traditional, pay-walled journal with a relatively high impact factor.

Given the large number of traditional pay-walled journals with low, or
no, impact factors, I find this not the most credible argument. And
even for ‘glam’ journals there are now good open access alternatives.

And yet, there are moments when I understand researchers when they are
having to decide where to submit their papers. Do they choose an older
subscription-supported journal, or a younger APC-supported open access
journal? In the latter case, they’ll have to find the funds to pay the
Article Processing Charge; in the former, they don’t, since
subscriptions are paid out of the library budget.  It does make a
difference to a researcher's perception. Even though in many cases it
is the funder who provides the money for the APCs, the researchers are
aware of the cost and part of the decisions they take are
financial/economic ones, even if sometimes subconsciously. They are
not confronted with financial/economic decisions if they submit to a
paywalled journal. Convenience may set in, perhaps in the form of a
certain laziness, and a decision to stick with the old hassle-free
subscription journals is easily taken.

It may happen here and there, but what I have not seen is attempts by
the library community to confront researchers with the cost of
paywalled journals. I'm not talking about the subscription price, but
about the cost to the system of a single paper published in such a
journal. It is a significant cost. For subscription journals published
by the major publishers, this is on average in excess of $5000 (there
are differences depending on the publisher), and for the ‘glam’
journals presumably more, much more (Phil Campbell, editor-in-chief of
Nature, estimated costs of $30,000–40,000 per paper in 2013
[http://www.nature.com/news/open-access-the-true-cost-of-science-publishing-1.12676].
That’s costs to the publisher; costs to the system will be higher, as
they include profits.)

Now imagine that universities, perhaps via their libraries, take care
of any payment to publishers, be they subscription charges or APCs,
and then reclaim a per-article fee from their grants whenever
researchers publish their articles. The amounts for APCs identical to
the amount charged by the open access journal in question, of course;
the amounts for articles in subscription journals on the basis of the
average per-article revenue of the publisher of those journals. (These
amounts may be reasonable estimates, I imagine, as they will seldom be
known in detail.) The amounts thus reclaimed for articles in
subscription journals could then be used for the journal acquisitions
budget.

I have no illusion that this would solve all the problems of the cost
of scientific publication, but it will increase general awareness of
the true cost of publishing in subscription journals, and may help to
level the playing field, to use an old cliché, between open access and
pay-walled literature in the mind of scientists at the point when they
decide where to publish their papers.

Worth developing the thought further?

Jan Velterop

(This post online:
http://theparachute.blogspot.nl/2015/07/levelling-open-access-paywall-playing.html)