[BOAI] Hybrid journal pricing (1): Impending Oxford Open price increases
Peter Suber
peters at earlham.edu
Tue Oct 20 20:51:10 BST 2009
[Forwarding from Bernd-Christoph Kaemper. --Peter Suber.]
Hybrid journal pricing (1): Impending Oxford Open price increases
You are satisfied that Oxford University Press takes the mixed revenue
model for their hybrid Oxford Open program seriously and reduces prices for
e-only site licenses for some of their journals in response to increased
Open Access uptake? Don't cheer too soon:
From Dec 2009, author publication charges for your scientists will
increase by 40% in GBP or EUR and 25% in USD, for all journals in the
Oxford Open program for which your library maintains a local online
subscription [13].
Oxford Open, the hybrid journal program of OUP, carefully designed as a
controlled experiment and case study [1-4], continues to evolve and adjust
its pricing model.
OUP promises to (and actually does) adjust the e-only price for its hybrid
journals in order to "reflect the amount of open access versus non-open
access content published within each journal" during the last completed
year when setting its annual prices, and this has resulted in some Oxford
Open journals experiencing a price reduction to the online-only
subscription, cf. the explanations and examples provided in [5-11]. We have
recently analysed the 2010 price list [15], and the 2010 OA % adjustment
ranges from 0% up to 28% (2009: 0%... 24%), with 8 titles at 16% and above,
20 titles in the range 8%...15%, 33 titles in the range 1...7% and 25
titles with no adjustment, median adjustment was 4% (2009: 2%), average
(aggregate) adjustment 7% (2009: 5%), relative to the 2010 online only
price without adjustment which may be derived from the print only and
combined prices that are not adjusted. Actual price decreases relative to
2009 range up to 14%, but there are also price increases up to 33% and the
median decrease is only 1% in GBP/EUR and 2% in USD, the aggregate decrease
1.3% resp. 2.7%.
It may be instructive to compare prices for the journal with the largest OA
uptake, Bioinformatics. From 2005 to 2010, online only price changed from
GBP 1008 to GBP 976 or EUR 1512 to 1464 (-3%), and USD 1714 to 1951 (+14%,
the company exchange rate used for USD/GBP was 1,7 in 2005, and 2.0 for
2010). In contrast, during the same years, combined subscription rates for
print plus online increased from GBP 1120 to 1626 or ca. EUR 1680 to 2439
(+45%), and from USD 1904 to 3252 (+71%).
There is one peculiar case, Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative
Medicine (eCAM), where OUP has abandoned the 2009 OA adjustment for the
online only version, thereby doubling its price for 2010. OUP claims that
INMPRC's 10 year sponsorship grant for eCAM (which helped to start the
journal in 2004) has ended which seems strange (requests by this author to
both the editor in chief and the managing editor to confirm this remained
unanswered). In 2007 eCAM moved from fully sponsored to a subscription
based model for non-research articles. For 2008 eCAM announced a change in
its OA policy: while all original research articles would continue to be
published open access (costs then presumably still being covered by the
sponsorship grant), "Reviews, editorials, commentaries and all other
articles excluding original articles will be published as standard
articles, available to subscribers of the journal. However, the journal
will participate in the Oxford Open program, and authors may choose to pay
the Oxford Open charges in order to have their articles published as open
access articles." eCAM has ca. 55% original research and 45% other
articles. For the latter, access is subscription based, if authors do not
opt in to pay for OA. Apparently they do, because the journal is nearly
100% OA (almost all articles carry a cc-by-nc license, and the two reviews
(3%) from 2008, that did not were still labelled with 'Free Full Text'). So
it is a mystery to us why OUP has abandoned the OA % adjustment: even if
original research articles were no longer sponsored through INMPRC, most of
the rest is being paid for by author charges. We do not know whether any
library actually pays for the online version - as this journal is 97% open
access and 100% free access, there is no need to do so except as a
voluntary sponsorship.
Since its inception, in addition OUP has used an incentive to keep
libraries subscribing to these hybrid journals by offering a lower author
publication charge for corresponding authors based at institutions with a
full price online subscription to the journal. At the same time this helped
to make the Oxford Open option more attractive to authors at those
institutions and provided an incentive for authors to try it out.
It has to be taken into account here that the majority of Oxford Open
journals are not excluded from collection deals for consortia. However,
reduced article processing fees apply only to fully paid subscriptions not
titles one might get via cross access or additional access with in
consortia collection deals.
From the Oxford Open FAQ [14],
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/faq/oxford_open.html
"Why is there a mixed model of funding under the Oxford Open model?"
"We have chosen this model in consultation with authors and librarians. The
ability of authors to pay publication charges is highly dependent on
sponsoring agencies and research institutions making the necessary changes
to their funding processes so that authors have the funds at their disposal.
For this reason we believe that any transition to an author-funded open
access model will need to occur gradually. We hope that you will support
the Oxford Open initiative by maintaining your online subscriptions to give
your researchers who wish to publish in the journal in question the option
of paying reduced author charges, should they choose to have their paper
made freely available online. By doing this we hope to establish an
accessible charging initiative that will actively encourage funding
agencies to make further resources available for publication."
Nevertheless, with a mixed revenue model like this, if we assume that the
full Open Access Charge is in the order of that required to sustain the
journals if they were to move to full open access without subscriptions
[4], the reduced rates are bound to increase, as OA uptake increases and
subscription rates are adjusted downwards correspondingly. I did not see
this effect mentioned in the various articles outlining the prospects for
pricing within the Oxford Open program, but it now becomes quite obvious.
The discount for authors from subscribing institutions has been reduced
twice in the 5 years since program start, i.e. from
47% in 2005-2007 : GBP 800 / USD 1500 / EUR 1200 vs. GBP 1500 / USD 2800 /
EUR 2250 to
40% in 2008-2009 : GBP 900 / USD 1800 / EUR 1350 vs. GBP 1500 / USD 3000 /
EUR 2250, and now to
25% in 2010- : GBP 1275 / USD 2250 / EUR 1900 vs. GBP 1700 / USD 3000 / EUR
2550
So for 2010 OUP increases author publication charges for authors from
subscribing institutions drastically, by over 40% in GBP and EUR, and 25%
in USD. In the 5 years since the inception of the program, APCs for
institutional subscribers have increased by 60% (USD 50%) which amounts to
an annual increase of 10% (USD 8,5%). If this were intended to shift money
from subscription fees to OA funding, and to limit any loss due to a higher
OA uptake, it would be clearly driven only by the needs of the journals
with the highest current OA uptake (near 30%). Given the multiple other
means of revenue increase used by OUP, it seems doubtful whether such a
large increase is really necessary, especially if it is applied to all
journals, even those with very low OA uptake. Interestingly, for Nucleic
Acids Research (NAR) Richardson [3] reported a substantial reduction in
cost per article from 2002 to 2005 (from GBP 2700 to ca. GBP 1750),
attributed to economies of scale, together with an "aggressive efficiency
drive which has increased speed of publication whilst reducing cost."
How many institutions and their authors will be affected by this price
increase? One would guess that a major part of submissions willing to pay
for open access to their paper would come from institutions that also hold
a subscription to the journal in question, also because the full open
access charge might seem prohibitive to many authors. For the Oxford Open
Journal with the highest OA uptake, Bioinformatics, this is indeed the
case. In 2006, 87% of authors choosing the Open access option for
Bioinformatics were eligible for the subscriber rates [11], and the press
release reporting the first full-year results from Oxford Open [5] quoted a
percentage of 80% overall. The converse could also be true: given the bonus
model above, any institution that is paying author publication charges on
behalf of its authors is better off, when it holds also a subscription,
mostly already with 1 pub/year, and certainly with 2 or 3. Thus, library
subscriptions may serve to support lower publication charges for authors.
Full Author publication charges (for authors from institutions that do not
have a fully paid subscription) increase also, for the first time in 5
years, by 13% in GBP and EUR while remaining unchanged in USD - the latter
possibly reflects that the GBP has lost in value compared to the USD; that
it has also lost compared to the EUR is conveniently ignored by OUP.
Similar, when OUP speaks of "exchange rate adjustments", these are
apparently made to offset the loss effects of currency devaluations for the
company, not to bring company rates in better accord with actual exchange
rates. E.g, for some US based titles we see in 2010 price increases by 33%
because OUP prefers to use a "company rate" of 1.0 USD/EUR instead of 1.33
(a result of switching from 2,0 USD/GBP to a more current exchange rate of
1,5 while leaving the EUR/GBP conversion rate unchanged at 1,5 GBP/EUR). On
the other hand, OUP UK titles continue to be sold in the USA at 2,0 USD/GBP
and in Europe at 1,5 EUR/GBP, even though the pound has lost 20...25%.
Therefore, institutions from USA and Canada (charged in USD) and Europe
outside UK (charged in EUR) would have been far better off for 2010, had
OUP - instead of announcing a "price freeze" on e-only, had increased
prices normally but then also adjusted the company exchange rates (20...25%
downwards) as it did conversely in previous years when the GBP was still
getting stronger in relation to the USD (2005: 1,7, 2006: 1,8, 2007: 1.8,
2008: 1,95, 2009: 2,0, 2010: 2,0). (That the failure to do so was not
necessarily related to the "price freeze" only, is apparent from the fact
that OUP did neither take into account the loss of the GBP against the EUR
in setting 2009 prices, the conversion rate has been kept at 1,5 since
2006). So this is a clear example of what we know as "exchange rate
profiteering" (raise the conversion rate as long as it can be justified by
an increasing exchange rate, but leave it unchanged for years if the
exchange rate falls back).
In this context it is interesting that we have here another publisher
believing that it is compatible with EU competition regulations to charge
markedly higher prices for non UK customers within the EU, using artificial
"company exchange rates" that are far from actual exchange rates, while at
the same hindering agencies to buy services at UK prices for reselling to
to non UK customers. A premise that in our opinion is worth contesting.
In summary, it appears that OUP makes up for the 2010 "price freeze" on
e-only subscriptions by price increases of 10% on print and 14% on combined
subscriptions [12] plus price increases of 13% resp. 41% on author charges
for its Oxford Open program, plus avoiding the need to adjust EUR and USD
conversion rates to GBP by 20...25% downwards for non-US titles. Not
exactly helpful ...
In implementing a cautious transition strategy towards more OA and away
from Print OUP has certainly been successful so far. They are also one of
the few hybrid publishers who actually make adjustments to their hybrid
journals depending on OA uptake, and carefully document the progress of
their experiments in OA publishing. However, based on our findings above,
librarians and university administrators should clearly not indulge in
illusions about direct savings for their institutions; and those who are
going to save are institutions that do not publish in a particular Oxford
Open journal they subscribe to (or, paradoxically, those who choose not to
publish OA via the golden route, as long as they at least self-archive).
Article processing charges so far seem to spiral up in the same way as
subscription charges did in the past. We are in a transition period, and it
is still too early to make predictions. Nevertheless, what we see here
indicates that there is now more money on the table for paying article
processing charges in certain fields for gold OA publishing in established
journals and OUP must think that price elasticity of demand for gold OA is
low enough to allow adjustments such as those described above (or perhaps
this is just another facette of their carefully designed longterm
experiment with hybrid OA models). Whether this will not throw back OA
uptake for 2010 remains to be seen.
Bernd-Christoph Kaemper,
Stuttgart University Library
References:
[1] David Worlock, OUP: OA In The World Of Intelligent Experiment,
in: EPS Insights, February 24, 2006
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/news/eps%20insights%2024%20february%202006%20-%20oup.pdf
[2] Martin Ruchardson: Open access: evidence-based policy or policy-based
evidence?
The university press perspective, in: Serials 18(1), March 2005, 35-37,
DOI:10.1629/1835
http://uksg.metapress.com/openurl.asp?genre=article&issn=0953-0460&volume=18&issue=1&spage=35
[3] Martin Richardson: Open access and institutional repositories: an evidence-
based approach, in: Serials 18(2), July 2005, 98-103, DOI:10.1629/1898
http://uksg.metapress.com/openurl.asp?genre=article&issn=0953-0460&volume=18&issue=2&spage=98
[4] Claire Saxby: The Bioinformatics Open Access option, Editorial,
in: Bioinformatics, Vol. 21 no. 22, 2005, p. 4071-4072,
DOI:10.1093/bioinformatics/bti707
http://bioinformatics.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/long/21/22/4071
[5] Press release, 30 August 2006
Full year results from Oxford Open show wide variation in open access
uptake across disciplines,
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/news/2006/08/30/full_year_results_from_oxford_op.html
[6] Richard Gedye: Open about open access: we share preliminary findings
from our open access experiments, in: Oxford Journals Update for
Librarians, Issue 2, Winter 2006
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/for_librarians/update_winter06.pdf
[7] Presentation slides, Audio of Panel discussion and final report,
"Asessing the impact
of open access: Preliminary findings from Oxford Journals", presented at
the Oxford
open access workshop, June 2006,
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/news/oa_workshop.htm
[8] Kate Stringer, Oxford Journals open access pricing adjustments,
posted to liblicense-l, Sun, 12 Aug 2007 15:28:30 EDT,
http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/ListArchives/0708/msg00050.html
cf. also comment by Peter Suber on an earlier liblicense-l announcement,
Oxford reduces prices on 28 hybrid journals
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007/07/oxford-reduces-prices-on-26-hybrid.html
[9] Martin Richardson: Oxford Open prices adjusted for open access uptake,
in: Oxford Journals Update for Librarians, Issue 2, Winter 2007/2008
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/for_librarians/oxford_open.pdf
[10] Mandy Hill: Oxford Open prices adjusted for third year in a row,
in: Oxford Journals Update for Librarians, Autumn 2008
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/for_librarians/update_autumn08.pdf
[11] Claire Bird: Case Study: Oxford Journals' adventures in open access,
in: Learned Publishing 21 No. 3 (July 2008), 200-208), DOI:
10.1087/095315108X288910
http://alpsp.publisher.ingentaconnect.com/content/alpsp/lp/2008/00000021/00000003/art00006
[12] Martin Richardson: Oxford Journals makes a change to its pricing policy,
in: Oxford Journals Update for Librarians, Autumn 2009
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/for_librarians/update_summer09.pdf
[13] Oxford Open Pricing. New charges -- for all papers accepted on or
after 1 December 2009,
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/oxfordopen/charges.html#New... [visited Mon,
Oct 19, 2009]
[14] Oxford Journals / Frequently Asked Questions: Oxford Open,
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/faq/oxford_open.html
[15] The data for this paper have been compiled in the spreadsheet
http://www.ub.uni-stuttgart.de/ejournals/OUP_2010_online-only_price_adjustments.xls
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pipermail/boai-forum/attachments/20091020/2984c686/attachment-0001.html
More information about the Boai-forum
mailing list