Every model for transitioning to open access has its advantages and disadvantages.
One of the potential benefits of the article processing charge method is transparency, which in theory could lead to more price and cost sensibility as Dirk describes. I was more optimistic about this potential in the past than I am today. OA journals and publishers' websites are full of information about APCs being paid for by institutions, funders, not out of authors' pockets. If funders pay for APCs, the cost may be transparent to authors and universities, but who pays attention when someone else is paying? In the transformative (subscriptions + open access) deals, APCs are no more transparent than subscriptions, and based on my prior experience negotiating licensing deals, these combined deals may make both the subscriptions and the APC costs more obscure, because ultimately, buyers and sellers of big deals are agreeing on a bundled price rather than a cost structure, never mind a transparent cost structure. Such deals have a strong potential to alter the APC market, because low APCs might seem to publishers as a weakness in negotiating. Also, for traditional scholarly publishers who have extensive back lists of works for which they own copyright (a major financial asset), the best case scenario is complete failure of the open access movement. New publishers who rely on APCs (e.g. PLOS, Hindawi, MDPI) have incentive to transform the entire system, but not traditional highly profitable publishers like SpringerNature and Elsevier. One of the strong drawbacks of APC is leaving out authors who cannot afford the fees. This is not just authors in low income countries. As Peter Murray-Rust helpfully pointed out recently, active retiree scholars like PMR do not have funding for APCs, either. This is also likely to be true of emerging scholars in the developed world who are in the process of trying to establish a career. Even if every university and research institution covered APCs for regular full-time researchers, it is unlikely that future such researchers would be covered. Another reason to be cautious about the potential of APC to achieve cost and pricing stability is that whether this will happen or whether we will see a continuation of the decades-old inelastic market for scholarly publishing in an open access market remains to be seen. Will authors see the cost and seek cost-effective publishing solutions? Or, will the underlying dynamic behind the inelastic market - "must purchase / subscribe" simply shift to "must-publish-in"? To date, based on our longitudinal APC study, while there is not enough data to draw firm conclusions, there is enough evidence of transitioning the inelastic market into APCs to warrant concern. As we have reported in the past few years, price increases that are far beyond inflationary levels, applied to already substantial prices, have been observed among both traditional-transitioning and new OA-only publishers. Select examples: SpringerOpen 2018/2019: 8% increase in average APC; 36% of journals, the ones with the highest volumes, increased in price at rates from double the inflation rate to double the price. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/08/13/springeropen-pricing-trends-2018-2019/ Frontiers 2018/2019: while the average APC increase is only 3%, 40% of Frontiers journals increased in price from 2018/2019 by 18% - 31% (the EU inflation rate is below 2% for this time frame). https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/04/30/frontiers-in-2019-3-increase-in-average-apc/ MDPI 2018/2019: "In brief: MDPI has increased prices, in many cases quite substantially (some prices have more than tripled). Even more price increases are anticipated in July 2019, which will have the effect of doubling the average APC and tripling the most common APC. Unlike other publishers’ practices, there are no price decreases". https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/02/13/mdpi-2019-price-increases-some-hefty-and-more-coming-in-july/ Kudos to Dr. Franck Vasquez, MDPI's CEO, for open discussion about similar price increases in 2018. The key takeaway I was hoping for in the case of new APC based publishers like MDPI is an understanding that this kind of price increases (market-based pricing) is not compatible with budgets of payers (libraries, universities and funding agencies' budgets are based on costs and resource availability). This fundamental conflict seems very likely to drive an inelastic, unsustainable APC market. However, after this open, transparent conversation, here we are again in 2019 with new OA publishers pursuing exactly the same pricing strategy. To conclude, while my team spends a lot of time studying APC trends, this does not imply endorsement of the method. In the past, I advocated for APCs as a way to introduce transparency and competition into the market. Today, I urge caution and strongly encourage consideration of other models. For example, direct subsidy models such as providing infrastructure for publishing and archives at the university or research organization and supporting editorial work (e.g. modest subsidy to pay for support staff) is much more efficient than APC, which is in effect an indirect subsidy model. If transparency is sought, universities and funding agencies, at least in my part of the world, have a solid reputation for seeking accountability for every cost incurred. best, Dr. Heather Morrison Associate Professor, School of Information Studies, University of Ottawa Professeur Agrégé, École des Sciences de l'Information, Université d'Ottawa Principal Investigator, Sustaining the Knowledge Commons, a SSHRC Insight Project sustainingknowledgecommons.org heather.morri...@uottawa.ca https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/?lang=en#/members/706 [On research sabbatical July 1, 2019 - June 30, 2020] ________________________________ From: goal-boun...@eprints.org <goal-boun...@eprints.org> on behalf of Pieper, Dirk <dirk.pie...@uni-bielefeld.de> Sent: Monday, September 2, 2019 4:00 AM To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <goal@eprints.org> Subject: Re: [GOAL] How to manage APC waivers and discounts Attention : courriel externe | external email Dear all, (a) even in “richer” countries it is necessary to reduce APC prices because of limited budgets of academic institutions and funder policies. In many cases authors and libraries are successful to get reduced APCs from publishers (b) I agree that APCs are in most cases not related to the costs of producing an article, but they indicate the costs for institutions or authors to publish OA in journals with certain publishers. That is a progress compared to the subscription system, because this is slowly leading to more price and cost sensibility. That is why I like APCs :)) … Best, Dirk Von: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] Im Auftrag von Peter Murray-Rust Gesendet: Samstag, 31. August 2019 17:18 An: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <goal@eprints.org> Cc: wam...@list.nih.gov; radicalopenacc...@jiscmail.ac.uk; scholcomm <scholc...@lists.ala.org> Betreff: Re: [GOAL] How to manage APC waivers and discounts Thank you Chris, I feel exactly as you do, maybe more. This is wrong on several counts. (a) as you say it requires the underprivileged (the "scholarly poor") to beg. Some journals give lower prices for World Bank LMIC countries - but often Brasil and India are classified as high-income. Even reducing the price to half is impossible for many countries. (b) the APC is NOT cost-related (see another post form me about DEAL). DEAL pays Springer the price of an article (2750 E) whereas the cost of processing is ca 400 E (Grossman and Brembs, 2019) Costs are almost never transparent, therefore cause prices to be whatever the publisher can get away with. This adds another layer of injustice. I am affected by the APCs. I am on the board of two journals and being retired have to pay and APC myself. I feel diminished if I have to ask to get a waiver, and in any case it looks very unethical to gve waivers to the board. I therefore cannot publish in the journals that I give my time freely to. The system is now completely out of date. Many places and organizations CAN run platinum journals (no fee open to all). It's more ethical equitable and makes knowledge fully available. 70% of climate papers are behind paywalls. Making a no-fee publish system is the only way to get the knowledge flowing. My software can read 10000 papers in a morning, but the broken societal system prevents that. P. On Sat, Aug 31, 2019 at 2:17 PM Chris Zielinski <ch...@chriszielinski.com<mailto:ch...@chriszielinski.com>> wrote: (Apologies for cross-posting) This is to raise a question about how editors of Open Access journals that demand an article processing charge (APC) should deal with discounts for non-institutional authors or those from poorer countries. The offering of substantial APC waivers to authors from specific countries or to researchers with financial constraints in specific cases is familiar. My question relates to the way in which such discounts are offered. Usually, a researcher needs to assert or demonstrate his/her inability to pay the APC before getting relief. The problem is that obliging researcher to request a lower or zero APC feels a bit like inviting them to beg – and the result often seems to depend on the benevolence and good humour of the editor, responding on an individual, case-by-case basis, rather than by applying some pre-established rule. This is surely not good enough. It can’t be correct and ethical scientific practice to require unsupported authors to face the embarrassment of having to turn out their pockets and demonstrate the holes in their socks before they get a discount. Any views on this? Should there be a norm among OA journals that each should adopt a standardized system to determine APC charges (ranging from 0 to the full APC, depending on an explicit list of circumstances), avoiding the need for any negotiation? Best, Chris Chris Zielinski ch...@chriszielinski.com<mailto:ch...@chriszielinski.com> Blogs: http://ziggytheblue.wordpress.com and http://ziggytheblue.tumblr.com Research publications: http://www.researchgate.net _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org<mailto:GOAL@eprints.org> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal -- "I always retain copyright in my papers, and nothing in any contract I sign with any publisher will override that fact. You should do the same". Peter Murray-Rust Reader Emeritus in Molecular Informatics Unilever Centre, Dept. Of Chemistry University of Cambridge CB2 1EW, UK +44-1223-763069
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