[BOAI] Re: Growth for STM publishers in 2008

[Peter Suber]

[Forwarding from John Houghton, via the LibLicense list.  --Peter Suber.]


While finding 'The stm Report' <http://bit.ly/1nGiCg> interesting and 
informative, in reference to work that I have been involved in I can't help 
noticing a repetition of the number of mistakes that were made by 
representatives of some in the publishing industry earlier this year and 
refuted at that time.

I refer to Section 4.9 (pp56-57) of The stm Report, which addresses the 
system-wide perspective on costs and cost savings. The text reads:

>"A JISC report (Houghton et al. 2009) published the following year by the 
>economist John Houghton estimated system-wide savings accruing to open 
>access publishing in the UK alone at GBP 212m, less the author-side fees 
>of GBP 172m, giving a net saving of GBP 41m. (This appears roughly 
>comparable in scale to the GBP 560m global savings estimated in the RIN 
>report.)  The largest single part of the savings (GBP 106m) came from 
>research performance savings, including reduced time spent by researchers 
>on search and discovery, seeking and obtaining permissions, faster peer 
>review through greater access, and less time spent writing due to greater 
>ease of access e.g. for reference checking. Funders should, according to 
>Houghton, therefore be comfortable with diverting research funds to pay 
>for open access charges because the savings in research performance etc. 
>would outweigh the cost.
>
>In response, publisher organisations (PA, ALPSP & stm 2009) have argued 
>that the analysis was deeply flawed. It underestimated the efficiencies of 
>the current subscription system and the levels of access enjoyed by UK 
>researchers. Many of the savings hypothesized would depend on the rest of 
>the world adopting author-pays or self-archiving models. The calculated 
>savings would remain hypothetical unless translated into job losses; for 
>example some 200 library job losses would be required to realize the 
>estimated GBP 11m savings in library costs. Critics also argue that 
>Houghton et al. underestimated the costs of switching to an author-pays 
>model because they underestimated the true costs of publishing an article 
>only, and because additional costs such as the infrastructure required to 
>manage the many small publication charges were not included.
>
>In addition to the system savings, Houghton suggested increased economic 
>returns to UK public-sector R&D arising from increased access might be 
>worth around GBP 170m. This appears speculative, resting on flawed and 
>untested assumptions about the levels of current access and the marginal 
>rate of return to any increased access."

Just for the record:

* The publishers' comments referred to (i.e. PA, ALPSP & stm 2009) 
triggered a response from JISC which I note is not mentioned, but was sent 
to the publishers' associations and can be found at
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/publications/responseoneiaspmreport.pdf.
Hence many of the mistakes (e.g. regarding job losses) could have been 
avoided rather than simply being repeated.

* In response to publishers' comments, an addendum to the JISC report was 
issued which can be found at
http://www.cfses.com/EI-ASPM/JISC%20EI-ASPM%20Report%20%28Addendum%20April%2009%29.pdf 

Its primary purpose was to further tease out the differences between models 
and between UK unilateral versus worldwide adoption of OA alternatives. 
Hence the issue embodied in the comment "Many of the savings hypothesized 
would depend on the rest of the world adopting author-pays or 
self-archiving models" has also been dealt with before and could have been 
avoided rather than simply being repeated.

* The phrase "Critics also argue..." (e.g. page 57 of The stm Report and 
page 7 in the recent SME report also by Mark Ware (see below)) fails to 
carry any references or indicate who the critics are. Are there such sources?

* Page 57 of The stm Report states: "... because additional costs such as 
the infrastructure required to manage the many small publication charges 
were not included." This claim about the cost of author-pays payment 
management is also repeated and is incorrect. A cost for author-side 
payments was included in the model.

* The stm Report states "... underestimated the efficiencies of the current 
subscription system..."  In fact, the returns to R&D aspect of the analysis 
is based on introducing accessibility and efficiency into a standard 
Solow-Swan model as negative or friction variables and looking at the 
impact of reducing the friction. Hence, "the efficiencies of the current 
system" are the baseline... they are not underestimated, overestimated or 
estimated in any way at all, they are taken as given.

* The stm Report states: "... speculative, resting on flawed and untested 
assumptions about the levels of current access...". The levels of access 
are discussed at length in the JISC report, as is the basis for the 
parameters used in estimating the potential impacts on returns to R&D 
spending. Data sources and references are given. Moreover, its difficult to 
see how the potential 5% increase in accessibility modelled in the JISC 
study could realistically be described as "underestimated... the levels of 
access enjoyed by UK researchers" in the light of the evidence. Just to 
take one example, a recent survey of UK small firm (SME) access to journal 
articles by Mark Ware Consulting 
(http://www.publishingresearch.net/SMEaccess.htm) found that 73% of 
UK-based SMEs report difficulties accessing the journal articles they need, 
and that just 2% of SME, 7% of large firm and 17% of higher education-based 
researchers reported having access to all the articles they need for their 
work (page 13, table 2). The same report notes that there are 4.7 million 
businesses in the UK of which 99.3% have fewer than 50 employees, and it 
would appear from reported sample sizes that 2% of SMEs equates to just 4 
firms. On page 22 the report notes that 71% of SMEs reported using open 
access journals and 42% reported using institutional repositories. On page 
30 the report also notes "Several firms were enjoying access via the 
libraries of the universities where they had previously worked. It was not 
entirely clear whether this use would have been legitimate under the terms 
of the libraries' licences." Only Mark knows whether there was any overlap 
between the 4 SMEs and the "several firms...", or between the 4 SMEs that 
reported having access to all the articles they needed and the 132 small 
firms that reported using OA journals.

Regards,
John Houghton

Victoria University

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