From: Richard Poynder <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 7 Oct 2013 10:35:28 +0100

A new Q&A in a series exploring the current state of Open Access has
been published. This one is with Sami Kassab, an Executive Director at
the investment company Exane BNP Paribas.

Kassab runs the Media Research team covering professional publishing.
Amongst the companies he monitors are Reed Elsevier, Thomson Reuters,
Informa, John Wiley, Wolters Kluwer, and Pearson.

Currently, Kassab is positive about the sector, arguing that
scientific publishing offers “best in class defensive growth in a very
resilient industry”.  Kassab believes that Open Access is still a
marginal activity and in any case poses neither a short-term nor a
long-term threat to large scholarly publishers. In fact, he says, it
will enable them to monetise more articles than they have been able to
monetise historically.

*Some excerpts:*

“For the big four STM publishers — Elsevier, Wiley, Springer and
Informa’s Taylor & Francis — we estimate that OA revenues account for
1% to 10% of STM journal revenues with an average of around 3%.”

~~

“Through our contact with leading OA publishers, we estimate that the
pot of money available for funding Gold OA APC is currently growing at
20% p.a. Our tracking of the growth in the number of OA mandates
(institutional and funders) registered on ROARMAP shows a similar
growth rate (30% in H1 2013 after c.20% in 2012).  Consequently, we
believe that both Green OA and Gold OA are likely to continue to grow
in the foreseeable future.”

~~

“Victor Hugo argued that nothing is more powerful than an idea whose
time has come. And yet, OA has been around for more than a decade and
still lacks any meaningful critical mass. Researchers are reluctant to
do the few extra keystrokes that are required for Green OA. High
compliance ratio to green OA mandates are not universal. Perhaps,
authors are unconvinced by the fundamental merit of the OA model.

“The same goes for institutions. Elsevier has over 4,000 institutional
clients around the globe. Less than 300 institutions have signed OA
mandates worldwide. In contrast, MOOCs have taken the higher education
world by storm with hundreds of institutions experimenting with MOOCs
within a few months.”

~~

“At the risk of playing the devil’s advocate, one could say that the
image of publishers, especially the largest ones, has actually
improved. This view would be consistent with the fact that journal
price inflation has come down, that large publishers have invested in
new products and technological features (search, visualisation tools,
mash-ups, database linking, apps, etc.) and have improved their
customer relationship management.”

~~

“[A] as the whole industry switches to Gold OA, we believe that large
publishers’ rejection rates are likely to come down. In other words,
for large publishers such as Elsevier and Springer, we expect an
increase in published output to compensate for lower price points.
Overall, as things stand, we do not agree that OA poses a significant
threat to publishers, in particular not to their share price
developments.”

The Q&A can be read here:
http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/media-research-analyst-at-exane-bnp.html

Richard Poynder