From: Peter Binfield <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 7 May 2014 10:23:01 -0700
Of interest to this list, we just provided a detailed blog post explaining the
options and pricing mechanism for an Institutional Arrangement at PeerJ
(whereby a library can bulk purchase, or pre-pay, for PeerJ publication
plans).
The post is at:
http://blog.peerj.com/post/85002106083/how-an-institutional-arrangement-works-at-peerj
and the full text is reproduced below
Pete Binfield
Publisher, PeerJ
How an Institutional Arrangement Works at PeerJ
Most publishers don't talk about the details of the institutional deals they
sign with Universities. In fact some publishers even include gagging clauses
in their contracts which explicitly prevent their library customers from
talking about how much they are paying, and for what!
PeerJ has no such 'gagging clause' for our customers - they are free to talk
about what they bought and what they paid. Therefore, we thought it would be
informative to lay out the options, which can be entered into by an
institutional customer of PeerJ (https://peerj.com/edu/) - customers which
include Berkeley, Stanford, Cambridge, Amsterdam and many more.
At PeerJ, individual authors purchase Lifetime Publication Plans for a
one-off, low priced payment (e.g. $139 'at the point of acceptance' for the
Basic Plan; $239 for the Enhanced Plan; and $339 for the Investigator Plan).
Once they have a plan, they can then publish future papers with us for free,
for life (Basic Plan holders can publish 1 per year, and the highest tier
allows unlimited publications per year). All co-authors on a paper need to
have a paid plan of some level. More details at https://peerj.com/pricing/.
We then have three options for libraries who want to fund Publication Plans
for their faculty:
1. A simple 'bulk purchase' of individual plans, which an institution can hand
out to their faculty as they see fit.
2. A 'pre-payment account' approach where an institution deposits an amount
of money with PeerJ. As authors from that institution submit to us, they then
get the option of paying for their plans from that pre-paid account (drawing
down as that happens).
3. Or a university can simply agree to cover our fees on a case by case basis
without going through PeerJ. In that case, they can still have a listing on
our Institution page to explain how their fund works (see MIT for for
example).
The advantage of option #1 is that there is very little administration for a
library to worry about once the plans are purchased (the library receives
'activation codes' which they distribute by email). The advantage of option #2
is that a library doesn't need to worry about the politics of who receives or
uses each plan, as it is automatically applied to each individual as they
naturally come to publish with us. An advantage with both options is that they
represent a 'one off' purchase for a library (i.e. there is no recurring
commitment, as they might experience with an institutional membership from
some other open access publishers, or from the annual fee to a subscription
journal) - they pay once and the faculty members who take advantage then have
the benefit forever.
From the point of view of an author both options are very 'hands off' - i.e.
they don't need to do anything additional to take advantage of the payments.
For option #1 - libraries simply email their selected recipients an activation
code which they 'click on' to activate their plan. For option #2 - we identify
qualifying faculty members and researchers as they come to publish with us
using their email address, and when they go to pa, we credit them with a plan
out of their pre-payment fund.
Both options make it possible for libraries to provide an Open Access
publication option to a large number of faculty and researchers in an
extremely cost effective way. For less than the price of just one year of
access to just one subscription journal, a library can provide literally
hundreds of their faculty with an open access publication option, for a single
one-off payment. And those plans, once purchased, are good for life, meaning
that those individuals can publish with us, for free, forever!
Institutions who sign up receive regular reporting; a public page on our site
showcasing what was bought and how their faculty can use it; and marketing
support. The institution gets 'administrator level' access to advanced
analytics tools which are continually enhanced; and they get personal support.
Libraries pay for plans at a discounted 'post acceptance' rate (because the
post-acceptance rate guarantees that their money is being used for an actual
publication). Specifically, Libraries which enter into one of these
arrangements receive a $10 discount off of the standard $139 price (e.g. $129
per Basic Publication Plan instead of $139, and the same $10 discount for
higher tiers). Therefore, for example, if they pre-paid $8K then that would
fund as many as 62 Basic Plans ($129 x 62 = $7,998) or, a smaller number of
some combination of other plans.
Libraries can choose to fund only 'Basic plans'; or to fund 'Basic or Enhanced'
plans, or to cover plans at 'any level'. Libraries also nominate which email
addresses they want to use to identify an author as coming from their
institution (e.g. anyone with *@stanford.edu in their address).
We have a minimum spend of just $5K to set up one of these arrangements (which
would, for example, fund a little over 38 'Basic' plans, i.e. 38 x $129 =
$4902). With our low price points, this way of doing things is clearly a much
better deal than paying for APC fees for every single publication (fees which
can rise as high as $5,000 per publication at some journals). The end result
is that for the price of a single APC fee at some other publication, a very
large number of faculty can be given a lifetime publication plan at PeerJ!
More information (including a list of institutions and selected case studies)
can be found at: https://peerj.com/edu. If you have are interested in open
access then we encourage you to put your librarian in touch via this form
(https://peerj.com/edu/).
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