From: "Boyter, Leslie" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2011 14:06:45 -0800

Joe,

A small point in response to one small aspect of your last message
(not to argue, just to provide a potential solution):

If colleges/universities only charged fees to accepted students, I
would have saved a lot of money and I would have applied to more
programs. That's not the case (at least not at most
colleges/universities I know of). Alternatively, potential students
can apply for waivers (oftentimes with rather stringent requirements),
but it seems few "average" people would qualify for the waivers (at
least the waiver requirements I saw).

Now, I'm not suggesting colleges/universities have the best economic
systems (ha!), but it seems the application process could easily be
adapted to work for author-pays journal submissions.

Therefore, I believe there is a relatively simple "fix" for the
author-pays economic situation you describe. Every author is required
to pay a small fee for submitting (call it an administrative fee if
you like, or perhaps a review fee). Accepted authors may or may not
have to pay an additional fee (it would depend on whether or not
submission fees covered enough of the costs). This would spread the
costs out across all submissions instead of just the accepted
submissions. This may also have the (un)intended consequence of
weeding out submissions that are less-than-qualified and/or would lead
authors to be choosier about where they submit their articles (much
like being choosy about which college applications to fill out).

Additionally, keeping the waivers for university applications in mind,
it might be possible to even the playing field a little for authors
who could not possibly pay the full fee. I do not currently have a
grand idea regarding what would qualify someone for a waiver (or maybe
a sliding-scale fee), but people more knowledgeable than myself can
figure that out.

I may be mis-remembering, but I believe I read something about such an
author-pays system a while back in one of the many, many e-mails about
OA journals. Regardless, I think it's fairly workable and would help
to spread costs a little more reasonably. I'm sure you will make it
painfully obvious where the inaccuracies in my suggestion(s) lie. I
look forward to your response. :)


BTW: I very much enjoy reading your messages. Whether or not I agree
with you, you always make me think about things a little differently.

~Leslie

Leslie R Boyter
Serials Specialist
Washington State Library
[log in to unmask]
360-704-5220

-----Original Message-----
From: LibLicense-L Discussion Forum
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of LIBLICENSE
Sent: Thursday, December 01, 2011 4:22 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Future of the Subscription Model

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