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