Re: The cost of peer review and electronic distribution of scholarly journals
On Thu, 22 May 2008, Talat Chaudhri [tac] wrote: Gold OA [1] isn't popular and, I suspect, [2] never will be. You are right about the first point [1], and the reason is partly the current price of Gold OA and partly the fact that Gold OA is not yet necessary, because Green OA (self-archiving) can provide OA. But whether the price of Gold OA when it amounts to nothing more than the cost of peer review will be popular [2] -- if and when it becomes a necessity (i.e., if and when universal Green OA makes subscriptions unsustainable) -- is not a matter of either popularity or suspicion: As long as peer review is necessary, paying the true costs of implementing it will be necessary, if one wants to publish (peer-reviewed research) at all. The good news is that the cost per paper of peer review alone then will be far less than the cost per paper of (subscription) publishing now, and the subscription cancellations will release many times the amount of money needed to pay for peer review alone. For the perplexed reader: Talat and I are not disagreeing on most of these points. We both agree that Green OA via self-archiving is feasible and desirable, and that publication will eventually consist of peer review alone. The only points of disagreement are about how to get there from here. I advocate Green OA mandates, whereas Talat advocates direct transition to peer-review-only, administered by university consortia. What Talat does not explain is how we are to get the 25,000 journal titles that are currently being published by their current publishers to migrate to (or be replaced by) such consortia. Nor does Talat explain how the consortia's true peer-review expenses would be paid, even if the 25K journals titles did, mirabile dictu, migrate to them of their own accord (although the answer even then is obvious: via Gold OA author-institution fees, paid out of their subscription cancellation savings). But apart from not wanting to call this sort of payment Gold OA (even though that's exactly what it is!) Talat also does not like Green OA mandates. The trouble is that Talat has no better way -- nor even an equally good alternative way -- to get the 2.5 million articles published annually in the 2.5K journals to migrate to their authors' Green OA IRs -- any more than he has a way of getting the university peer review consortia created, or of getting the journal titles to migrate over to (or be replaced by) them. So let's focus on the substantive points of agreement: (1) Universal Green OA and (2) publishing costs reduced to just peer review alone. Talat can leave the problem of generating that Green OA to the Green OA mandates, and he can call the funding of the peer review something other than Gold OA if he likes -- it all comes to the same thing anyway... On downsizing to Gold OA, I'm afraid that I agree with the original point in the article to which N. Miradon posted a link recently. The developing world doesn't want it. Reply: Downsizing is for publishers (not researchers) to do, under Green OA cancellation pressure. The only thing the developing world need do is to provide Green OA to its own article output by self-archiving the accepted, refereed final drafts (postprints) in their IRs (which is exactly the same thing the developed world needs to do). Neither, I submit, does anybody in the developed world want to pay for it. They needn't. They need only mandate and provide Green OA. The rest will take care of itself. Institutions are already paying for publication (via subscriptions). When they no longer have to pay for subscriptions by the incoming journal, institutions' savings will be more than enough to pay for peer review by the outgoing article instead. In terms of diverting currently subscription funds progressively to OA, any librarian such as myself will tell you that getting management agreement for what looks *to them* like a hypothetical new publishing model is going to be complex and very possibly unworkable, leaving only the few universities that have created funds for the purpose. None to my knowledge has agreed to allocate money on a yearly basis, as the costs are currently unknown. But I have not said anything whatsoever about libraries needing to progressively divert subscription funds to OA. I said universities and funders should mandate and provide OA (as 44 universities and funders, including Southampton and Harvard, NIH and ERC have done) and that IF and WHEN that should ever make subscriptions unsustainable (i.e., they are all cancelled), THEN a small portion of their windfall institutional savings can and will be redirected to pay for peer review. No one is asking libraries to divert anything anywhere now, instantaneously or progressively. (If and when the time of universal, unsustainable cancellations comes, Necessity will be the Mother of Invention. No need to speculate or counterspeculate about it in our imaginations now, pre-emptively; let's just
Re: The cost of peer review and electronic distribution of scholarly journals
From: Enrico M. Balli enrico -- medialab. sissa. it List-Post: goal@eprints.org List-Post: goal@eprints.org Date: May 24, 2008 10:56:55 AM EDT (CA) To: liblicense-l -- lists. yale. edu Dear Stevan, I totally share your statement on Richard Poynder's query, and would like to give my contribution to the discussion. Sissa Medialab is not exactly a publisher, but we have some journals jointly published with IOP: JHEP, JCAP, JSTAT and JINST. We provide the peer review for all our journals, and we believe that the quality of our peer is very high. During the year 2007 these journals published 1851 papers. The total revenue of our company in the same fiscal year was 1.242.108 euros, without any loss. As you can imagine our rejection rate is higher than zero, and the number of reviewed papers is higher than the number of published papers. I'm not disclosing any industrial secret here: we are a limited company and our balance sheet is public, and our journals are online and everybody can check these figures. The same applies to any other commercial publisher, BTW... I hope this helps. Enrico M. Balli -Messaggio originale- SH: In particular, all the current costs of providing both the print edition and the PDF edition, as well as all current costs of access-provision and archiving will vanish (for the publisher), because they have been off-loaded onto the the distributed network of Green OA IRs, each hosting their own peer-reviewed, published postprints. The only service the peer-reviewed journal publisher will need to provide is peer review itself. That is why Richard Poynder's recent query (about the true cost of peer review alone) is a relevant one. As I have said many times before, based on my own experience of editing a peer-reviewed journal for a quarter century, as well as the estimates that can be made from the costs of Gold OA journals *that provide only peer review and nothing else today*, the costs per paper of peer review alone will be so much lower than the costs per paper of conventional journal publishing today, or even the costs per paper of most Gold OA publishing today, that the problem of the possibility of imbalance between net user-institution costs and net author-institution costs will vanish, just as the the subscription model vanished. Stevan Harnad
Re: The cost of peer review and electronic distribution of scholarly journals
His concluding paragraph says, 'A publish for free, read for free' model may one day prove to be viable. Meanwhile, if I have to choose between the two evils, I prefer the 'publish for free and pay to read' model over the 'pay to publish and read for free' one. Because if I must choose between publishing and reading, I would choose to publish. Who would not?' There is a significant fallacy in the assumptions here, though. In order to publish one must first have been able to read. All scholarly work, whether it is HE Physics or postmodern cultural theory, requires access to the existing body of work before sensible writing can be produced. The comment that we _have_ publish for free and read for free is so gross a simplification that it amounts to a lie. I don't care, as an individual, that my University subscribes to atmospheric physics and meteorology journals (and since my University has a highly rated Meteorology department they subscribe to many of these) because even in my highly interdisciplinary work I have never yet come across a need to consult one. However, I am regularly coming across journal from sociology, economics, computer science, history, and law that I need individual access to but for which my University has either never subscribed or does not have access to the particular issue (old or new) that I wish to read a paper in. I am then faced with fees of up to hundreds of dollars for access to one article. This is the reality of the monetary costs inhibiting research today. I do NOT have read for free. I am particularly disadvantaged by this because I work in a highly interdisciplinary field (social, legal and ethical impacts of computer and communication technology) and because I am building a new (to my university) research group. The blessed who work in large long-lived groups dedicated to a narrow field of research and who therefore never have an access problem themselves should recognise that they are losing impact because their deep research is an input to broad research such as mine, and that I'm losing out because the nature of my field militates against the few economies of scale that current publishing models generate. In the world before the internet I would have had no option but to spend my time travelling to other institutions to use their libraries or paying for some form of inter-library loan. But the internet is here and SHOULD provide me with the access I need but it is prevented by academic inertia and publishing vested interests, the former often generated by a combination of lack of understanding of scholarly communication in the broader community and a lack of courage in dealing with change all of which is exacerbated by publisher FUD. -- Dr Andrew A Adams, School of Systems Engineering The University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6AY, UK Tel:44-118-378-6997 E-mail:a.a.ad...@rdg.ac.uk http://www.rdg.ac.uk/~sis00aaa/
Re: The cost of peer review and electronic distribution of scholarly journals
Let's be honest, though, Dr Gadagkar can only *sometimes* have his cake and eat it right now. Could be relatively good if he is a physicist but a complete wash-out if he is researching in arts or many social science subjects. Let's not kid ourselves, only a small proportion of very new research in certain limited disciplines is available OA right now. And his core point about Gold OA excluding the developing world is valid (and indeed retired, unemployed academics or those qualified but in other professions for whom central Gold OA fees may not be paid, even in the rare instances that a fund exists). Green OA does not need Gold OA and should never suggest it as a good idea. Whatever the other debates, though, we must be honest about how far OA has advanced. (I do find it annoying that I can't get to read the entire letter: rather ironic, given the subject!) Talat Chaudhri Repository Manager Aberystwyth University -Original Message- From: American Scientist Open Access Forum [mailto:american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org] On Behalf Of Ept Sent: 22 May 2008 15:04 To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Subject: Re: The cost of peer review and electronic distribution of scholarly journals Dr Gadagkar can have his cake and eat it right now. Barbara - Original Message - From: Stevan Harnad har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2008 1:38 PM Subject: Re: The cost of peer review and electronic distribution of scholarly journals ** Apologies for Cross-Posting ** On Thu, 22 May 2008, N. Miradon wrote: The current issue of Nature has correspondence from Dr Raghavendra Gadagkar. The abstract of his letter (available at [1]) compares and contrasts 'publish for free and pay to read' with 'pay to publish and read for free'. To read the letter in full will cost you USD 18. N Miradon [1] http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7194/full/453450c.html Nature 453, 450 (22 May 2008) | doi:10.1038/453450c; Published online 21 May 2008 Here is the part you can read for free: Open-access more harm than good in developing world Raghavendra Gadagkar Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560012, India The traditional 'publish for free and pay to read' business model adopted by publishers of academic journals can lead to disparity in access to scholarly literature, exacerbated by rising journal costs and shrinking library budgets. However, although the 'pay to publish and read for free' business model of open-access publishing has helped to create a level playing field for readers, it does more harm than good in the developing world... It is easy to guess what else the letter says: That at the prices currently charged by those Gold OA publishers that charge for Gold OA publishing today, it is unaffordable to most researchers as well as to their institutions and funders in India and elsewhere in the Developing World. This is a valid concern, even in view of the usual reply (which is that many Gold OA journals do not charge a fee, and exceptions are made by those that do charge a fee, for those who cannot afford to pay it). The concern is that current Gold OA fees would not scale equitably if they became universal. However, the overall concern is misplaced. The implication is that whereas the user-access-denial arising from the the unaffordability of subscription fees (user-institution pays) is bad, the author-publication-denial arising from the unaffordability of Gold OA publishing fees (author-institution pays) would be worse. But this leaves out Green OA self-archiving, and the Green OA self-archiving mandates that are now growing worldwide. Not only does Green OA cost next to nothing to provide, but once it becomes universal, if it ever does go on to generate universal subscription cancellations too -- making the subscription model of publishing cost recovery unsustainable -- universal Green OA will also by the very same token generate the release of the annual user-institution cancellation fees to pay the costs of publishing on the Gold OA (author-institution pays) cost-recovery model. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/ 399w e152.htm The natural question to ask next is whether user-institution costs and author-institution costs will balance out, or will those institutions that used more research than they provided benefit and those institutions that provided more research than they used lose out? This would be a reasonable question to ask (and has been asked before) http://www.google.com/search?num=100hl=enq=+site%3Alistserver.sigmaxi. org+ amsci+%22net+provider%22btnG=Search -- except that it is a fundamental mistake to assume that the *costs* of publishing would
Re: The cost of peer review and electronic distribution of scholarly journals
Re 'Open access does more harm than good. . . .' Colleagues, even though we have a personal subscription to Nature, we seem to be unable to access Correspondence online. Therefore I can only summarise the letter in our printed copy from Raghavebdra Gadagkar, Centre for Ecological Sciences, IISc, Bangalore. The letter is mostly concerned with the comparitive advantage of pay to publish versus pay to read. The cost of peer review is not addressed, though reference is made to the perceived bias against developing country authors during the review process. The author only refers to OA journals, and only to those that make a charge for publication. There is no reference to the majority of OA journals that make no charge for publication, and no reference to OA Institutional Repositories. His concluding paragraph says, 'A publish for free, read for free' model may one day prove to be viable. Meanwhile, if I have to choose between the two evils, I prefer the 'publish for free and pay to read' model over the 'pay to publish and read for free' one. Because if I must choose between publishing and reading, I would choose to publish. Who would not?' It would seem that the author is uninformed about the realities of OA and believes the only option at present is to pay to publish in OA journals. So I feel a letter should be sent to Nature explaining a) most OA journals make no publication charge, b) there is a vast amount of OA matrerial in IRs, c) the IISc already has an IR registered in OpenDOAR (its description says, ' This site is a university repository providing access to the publication output of the institution', but it seems Dr Gadagkar is not aware of it). Additionally, the letter should include information on the great amount of usage of OA Journals (eg Bioline International recorded 3.5 million full text downloads in 2007 from 70 no-fee journals published in develping countries) and OA repositories (eg http://epublishingtrust.blogspot.com/2008/03/bring-on-irs.html, from EPT Blog). Dr Gadagkar can have his cake and eat it right now. Barbara - Original Message - From: Stevan Harnad har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2008 1:38 PM Subject: Re: The cost of peer review and electronic distribution of scholarly journals ** Apologies for Cross-Posting ** On Thu, 22 May 2008, N. Miradon wrote: The current issue of Nature has correspondence from Dr Raghavendra Gadagkar. The abstract of his letter (available at [1]) compares and contrasts 'publish for free and pay to read' with 'pay to publish and read for free'. To read the letter in full will cost you USD 18. N Miradon [1] http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7194/full/453450c.html Nature 453, 450 (22 May 2008) | doi:10.1038/453450c; Published online 21 May 2008 Here is the part you can read for free: Open-access more harm than good in developing world Raghavendra Gadagkar Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560012, India The traditional 'publish for free and pay to read' business model adopted by publishers of academic journals can lead to disparity in access to scholarly literature, exacerbated by rising journal costs and shrinking library budgets. However, although the 'pay to publish and read for free' business model of open-access publishing has helped to create a level playing field for readers, it does more harm than good in the developing world... It is easy to guess what else the letter says: That at the prices currently charged by those Gold OA publishers that charge for Gold OA publishing today, it is unaffordable to most researchers as well as to their institutions and funders in India and elsewhere in the Developing World. This is a valid concern, even in view of the usual reply (which is that many Gold OA journals do not charge a fee, and exceptions are made by those that do charge a fee, for those who cannot afford to pay it). The concern is that current Gold OA fees would not scale equitably if they became universal. However, the overall concern is misplaced. The implication is that whereas the user-access-denial arising from the the unaffordability of subscription fees (user-institution pays) is bad, the author-publication-denial arising from the unaffordability of Gold OA publishing fees (author-institution pays) would be worse. But this leaves out Green OA self-archiving, and the Green OA self-archiving mandates that are now growing worldwide. Not only does Green OA cost next to nothing to provide, but once it becomes universal, if it ever does go on to generate universal subscription cancellations too -- making the subscription model of publishing cost recovery unsustainable -- universal Green OA will also by the very same token generate the release of the annual
The cost of peer review and electronic distribution of scholarly journals
Dear All, I am trying to establish (in the specific context of scholarly journals) whether anyone knows of any research that has been undertaken to establish the dollar cost of a) implementing the peer review of a scholarly paper, b) distributing a scholarly paper electronically. If so, I would be grateful for details of what the estimated costs were, and links to any papers/reports that were produced as a result of that research (if they are available on an OA basis). Thanks in advance. Richard Poynder www.richardpoynder.co.uk
Re: The cost of peer review and electronic distribution of scholarly journals
On Tue, 20 May 2008, Richard Poynder wrote: I am trying to establish (in the specific context of scholarly journals) whether anyone knows of any research that has been undertaken to establish the dollar cost of a) implementing the peer review of a scholarly paper, b) distributing a scholarly paper electronically. If so, I would be grateful for details of what the estimated costs were, and links to any papers/reports that were produced as a result of that research (if they are available on an OA basis). There's this old CERN Discussion Group Summary by APS's Mark Doyle: http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/0921/02/Doyle-peer-review.ppt APS estimated the cost as $500 per paper, but it is not at all clear that that estimate is really what peer review would cost alone, without being part of the entire current publishing process and infrastructure. The only ones who could answer that would be those who have implemented an OA journal whose *only* function is providing peer review: no print edition, no online edition, mark-up, no document creation, no PDF production, no access-provision, archiving, fulfillment or distribution -- all of that being offloaded instead onto the network of IRs, providing open access to their own published output. (My guess is that it will be less, perhaps well less, than $200 per paper even if the costs of the rejected papers are factored into the costs of the accepted ones.) As for the costs of providing that access: That should be easier to estimate, even from today's near-empty IRs: Pick some IRs whose only target is peer-reviewed journal articles, find out the start-up cost for setting up the IR, plus the annual maintenance costs. Then determine the annual institutional article output, and divide that by the annual IR costs. (It should come out to less than $10 per paper.) Looking forward to hearing what you find in place of these armchair guesstimates... Stevan Harnad
