From: Jan Velterop <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2011 07:10:29 +0000
Joe,
You say I'm not grasping the basic economics here. I'm afraid I have
to return the compliment. Whilst I agree that for OA journals the
costs are all carried by the published articles (that's why I have
argued for almost a decade now that submission fees – in the manner of
exam fees, if you wish – would be much better, but that's clearly too
fair a system to be taken up by publishers and scientists), the costs
are all carried by the published articles in a subscription journal,
too!
Subscription prices are not – cannot be – higher just because the
rejection rate is higher (if that is indeed known at all by the
subscriber). Journal subscription prices have typically risen
proportional with the amount of material published (on top of
inflation and various currency ratchets). It is also not the case (and
hasn't been for decades) that journals with a higher rejection rate
are intrinsically able to sell more subscriptions. This may have been
the case in the distant past, and if you are as old as I am you may
even remember it, just, but it is most definitely not the case now any
longer.
Of course, if you work hard on it, it may be possible to find one or
two exceptions to the above. But they won't change the general pattern
of thousands of journals. And don't show me the likes of Science or
Nature as examples, please. (I'm not saying that you would, but it's
often done.) They are magazines with some science content in the back,
and to a large degree supported by advertising anyway.
Speaking for myself, I *do* care if a publication is generally and
openly accessible. That should be the whole purpose of publishing
scientific results: to make them available to others to build on it.
But I also care that the system is economically sustainable. And the
system of author-side paid OA publishing clearly is, despite
widespread skepticism.
What I do *not* care about is the so-called 'quality' of publications
beyond a basic methodological scientific soundness (à la PLoS One).
Any other filters can nowadays easily be applied by researchers
themselves, especially if the material is OA, and it can be done in a
much more varied way than a journal is able to do.
By the way, regarding your remark on the TA system being "indifferent
to the fate of libraries except insofar as every vendor wants its
customers to survive", it is worth considering if there is a role for
libraries at all in an author-side paid OA system.
Jan Velterop
On 2 Dec 2011, at 00:22, LIBLICENSE wrote:
> From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2011 17:43:10 -0800
>
>
> Jan,
>
> You really are not grasping the basic economics here. In an author-
> pays situation, a number of articles are submitted. The "journal" (if
> that is still the appropriate term) reviews all of them. Only accepted
> articles carry a fee. Thus that fee must cover all of the rejected pieces
> as well as the one that is accepted. The more submissions, the more
> rejections; the more popular the service, the greater the overhead.
> Thus author-pays journals will, as the market develops, be motivated
> to reduce costs, and part of those savings will come from lighter editorial
> review. The core economic issue is that the individual author or his or
> her proxy (such as a "subscribing" institution) has to carry the entire system.
>
> With toll-access (it need not be subscription-based, though it usually is),
> overhead rises with increased submissions, which are a reflection of a
> stronger brand. But the cost of this can be offset by finding new customers,
> since the higher-ranked publications reach wider audiences. Higher-ranked
> publications can also impose stiff price increases, which customers of course
> detest, but the history of this business is clear in that customers
> pay for quality.
> You don't have these options with author-pays OA.
>
> Toll-access publishers fight hard to get the best publications and the best
> authors for those publications because that perceived quality can lead to
> stronger revenues. There is no equivalent for author-pays OA.
>
> As for the question of whether it "works," well, works for whom? The
> toll-access
> model works for the winners; it is heartless about the losers. It is
> indifferent to
> the fate of libraries except insofar as every vendor wants its
> customers to survive,
> even if just barely. The author-pays model works for discovery tools. It
> disseminates content for anyone who wants to disseminate it. So it
> works, too.
>
> Speaking for myself, I don't care a fig if a publication is
> toll-access or author-
> pays. My interest is in organizations that are self-supporting, and both toll-
> access and OA services can be.
>
> Joe Esposito
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 2:24 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> From: Jan Velterop <[log in to unmask]>
>> Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2011 07:37:59 +0000
>>
>> Joe,
>>
>> There are many kinds of OA publishing as there are many kinds
>> of subscription-based (SB) publishing. And the level of peer-review
>> also differs, between journals, and often within journals. You
>> question the potential for success of peer-reviewed OA journals
>> because "there is no large customer base over which the overhead
>> can be spread." How so? Unless you are talking about magazine-type
>> journals with personal subscriptions (of which there are a few, but as
>> a portion of the total number of journals, theirs is a fraction of a
>> percent) there is a customer base of hundreds, occasionally more
>> than a thousand, libraries for most journals. That compares to the
>> number of potentially paying researchers, which is more than a
>> million (given the number of articles currently being published every
>> year).
>>
>> The business problem of how to keep submissions coming is there
>> for OA publishing as well as for SB publishing. Subscriptions to
>> 'empty' journals aren't very sustainable. The SB model has an
>> added business problem: how to keep libraries subscribing and
>> paying.
>>
>> You call it a "fundamental problem" for author-pays OA publishing
>> (which is in reality 'author-side-paid OA publishing') that it "does not
>> add value to the people who pay for it". That is misunderstanding
>> the academic 'ego-system'. It is "Publish or Perish", not "Read or Rot"
>> putting the need, and that means the value-add, squarely, or at least
>> largely, on the side of the author. And also, an author can choose
>> where to publish, a reader needs access to everything in his or her
>> field. OA journals have no monetizable monopoloid position anymore,
>> in the way the SB journals do. Indeed, author-side-paid OA resolves
>> the economic contradictions and monopoly problems inherent in the
>> SB model.
>>
>> Jan Velterop
>>
>>
>> On 30 Nov 2011, at 00:57, LIBLICENSE wrote:
>>
>> From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
>> Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2011 18:19:27 -0800
>>
>> Not present in this discussion is the fact that there are many
>> different kinds of OA publishing. The flagship PLOS journals,
>> for example, have an editorial policy that resembles that of
>> established toll-access journals. But PLOS One has a
>> different kind of peer review. The first kind is probably too
>> expensive to thrive (as OA), since there is no large customer
>> base over which the overhead can be spread. The latter kind,
>> which is now being widely imitated, is thriving now, but the
>> long-term prospects are uncertain.
>>
>> The business problem is how to keep the submissions coming
>> for the PLOS One model. This may not be a problem for PLOS
>> itself or its One service because of the strength of the brand.
>> But what about all the other publishers that are working with this
>> author-pays "lite" peer review model? Why would an author submit
>> material to one such service over another? In the absence of
>> old-fashioned peer review, the OA services will be hard to
>> distinguish from one another.
>>
>> The fundamental problem with author-pays OA publishing is that
>> it does not add value to the people who pay for it. It adds value
>> to the people who do not pay for it. In economics, internal
>> contradictions have a way of revealing themselves given enough time.
>>
>> Joe Esposito
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