From: "Armbruster, Chris" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2011 01:29:30 -0800

Fred, all,

1. Any re-arrangement of the 'playing field' would need to be
coordinated and implemented by scholarly institutions (e.g. funders,
research libraries, universities) taking the lead. However, at this
point in time (and despite years of advocacy), there is a lack of
concerted policy implementation with sufficient resources - possibly
because the major players do not have a plan on how to organize any
transition. More below.

2. Starting/adding new journals: The growth rate of the DOAJ suggests
that barriers to entry in OA publishing are low. Also, many major SB
publishers now have OA journals, both megajournals and specialist
journals. As Chuck Hamaker pointed out (Tue, 22 Nov 2011 03:47:51),
big deals allow for the easy addition of new/bought journals.
Currently, there is evidence that OA publishing is growing faster than
scholarly publishing overall, hence more is added on the OA side than
the SB side.

A few more points on SB, BD (big deal) and OA publishing:

A. Scholars, principally, want access to all published content (e.g.
surfing links, finding hidden gems). BD-SB publishing, principally,
provides more access. Through consortia deals, access may be expanded.
OA advocates should realize that SB publishing has moved in the
direction of more access and principally includes the option of
'universal' access (e.g. national license). Of course, SB publishers
compete for scarce funds, but so do OA publishers (at present there
would seem to be more megajournal start-ups than funds to go
round...). Also, there is something like subscription-based publishing
in OA journals (e.g. institutional funds) and with a large OA
publisher this starts to look like a big OA deal. Scholarly
institutions need to develop policies that allow them to channel their
funds more effectively - for OA and SB publishing. One suggestion for
BD publishing: (Metric) Evaluation of journal impact (citations,
usage, access) could be used to periodically cut off a percentage of
badly performing journals (worst 10%?) to free up funds and make room
for innovation: in SB and OA publishing.

B. Of course, advocates point out that OA publishing delivers not just
free access but also many re-use rights (ideally, for not all OA
publishers use such licenses, and as the SOAP project found out,
particularly small OA publishers don't). Scholarly institutions would
need to get together and decide how much OA they want, what kind they
are willing to pay for (e.g. flagship, specialist, mega-journal, must
include re-use rights?), and how much. Launching pilots, collecting
some success stories etc. no longer is good enough. You need a funding
scheme that is stable and predictable (which SB publishing offers),
because that serves a growing scholarly communication system best.

C. OA publishers have innovated, and these innovations are catching
on. By comparison, scholarly institutions and advocates seem to be
lagging behind. Few institutions have comprehensive funding schemes.
Even fewer are willing to re-allocate resources from SB to OA
publishing. More importantly, no one has bothered to come up with a
transition plan. N.B. Transitioning to OAP (or more funded OAP) may
seem like a big thing to insiders, but one would do well to remember
that post-1989 some societies transitioned as a whole and successfully
in the course of fifteen years (e.g. new EU member states, not many of
which are now threatened by default...). So transitioning scholarly
publishing, by comparison, is a small task.

D. Co-ordinating and implementing an OA policy and funding scheme may
be neither easy nor cheap. However, the CEPA report 'Heading for the
Open Road'  provides for scenarios and indicates how consortia and
countries could go it 'first' - i.e. there is no need for global
coordination. Moreover, the players/countries agreeing to some form of
organized transition are likely to benefit most because of their
head-start to further innovation.

Chris
________________________________________
From: LibLicense-L Discussion Forum [[log in to unmask]] On
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Sent: 23 November 2011 03:50
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Future of the Subscription Model

From: FrederickFriend <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2011 10:49:02 +0000

Chris makes an important point about the growth in the published
output. What we do not know - as far as I know - is the balance in
this growth between adding articles to existing journals or starting
new journals. Nor do we know the balance in this growth between
adding new journals to the SB big deals or starting new OA journals.
It is a recurrent theme in negotiations that libraries are asked to pay
more for big deals because of the new titles added to the package,
and yet we also hear about large numbers of articles published
through PLoS One. Where is the new output going? I agree with
Chris that we should be "optimizing the synergy" of OA and SB
publishing, but it is difficult to achieve such synergy in an environment
so weighted in favour of large-scale SB publishing. I remember talk
a few years ago of the need for a "level playing-field" but that has
never been achieved.

Fred Friend

-----Original Message----- From: LIBLICENSE
Sent: Tuesday, November 22, 2011 1:14 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Future of the Subscription Model

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
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From: LibLicense-L Discussion Forum [[log in to unmask]] On
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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



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