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<font size=3>[Forwarding from Bernd-Christoph Kaemper. --Peter
Suber.]<br><br>
<br>
Hybrid journal pricing (1): Impending Oxford Open price
increases<br><br>
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:<br><br>
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].<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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%.<br><br>
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%).<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
From the Oxford Open FAQ [14],
<a href="http://www.oxfordjournals.org/faq/oxford_open.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/faq/oxford_open.html<br><br>
</a>"Why is there a mixed model of funding under the Oxford Open
model?"<br><br>
"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.<br><br>
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."<br><br>
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.<br><br>
The discount for authors from subscribing institutions has been reduced
twice in the 5 years since program start, i.e. from<br><br>
47% in 2005-2007 : GBP 800 / USD 1500 / EUR 1200 vs. GBP 1500 / USD 2800
/ EUR 2250 to<br>
40% in 2008-2009 : GBP 900 / USD 1800 / EUR 1350 vs. GBP 1500 / USD 3000
/ EUR 2250, and now to<br>
25% in 2010- : GBP 1275 / USD 2250 / EUR 1900 vs. GBP 1700 / USD 3000 /
EUR 2550<br><br>
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."<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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%.<br><br>
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).<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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 ...<br><br>
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.<br><br>
Bernd-Christoph Kaemper,<br>
Stuttgart University Library<br><br>
<br>
References:<br><br>
[1] David Worlock, OUP: OA In The World Of Intelligent Experiment,<br>
in: EPS Insights, February 24, 2006<br>
<a href="http://www.oxfordjournals.org/news/eps%20insights%2024%20february%202006%20-%20oup.pdf" eudora="autourl">
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/news/eps%20insights%2024%20february%202006%20-%20oup.pdf<br>
<br>
</a>[2] Martin Ruchardson: Open access: evidence-based policy or
policy-based evidence?<br>
The university press perspective, in: Serials 18(1), March 2005, 35-37,
DOI:10.1629/1835<br>
<a href="http://uksg.metapress.com/openurl.asp?genre=article&issn=0953-0460&volume=18&issue=1&spage=35" eudora="autourl">
http://uksg.metapress.com/openurl.asp?genre=article&issn=0953-0460&volume=18&issue=1&spage=35<br>
<br>
</a>[3] Martin Richardson: Open access and institutional repositories: an
evidence-<br>
based approach, in: Serials 18(2), July 2005, 98-103,
DOI:10.1629/1898<br>
<a href="http://uksg.metapress.com/openurl.asp?genre=article&issn=0953-0460&volume=18&issue=2&spage=98" eudora="autourl">
http://uksg.metapress.com/openurl.asp?genre=article&issn=0953-0460&volume=18&issue=2&spage=98<br>
<br>
</a>[4] Claire Saxby: The Bioinformatics Open Access option,
Editorial,<br>
in: Bioinformatics, Vol. 21 no. 22, 2005, p. 4071-4072,
DOI:10.1093/bioinformatics/bti707<br>
<a href="http://bioinformatics.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/long/21/22/4071" eudora="autourl">
http://bioinformatics.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/long/21/22/4071<br>
<br>
</a>[5] Press release, 30 August 2006<br>
Full year results from Oxford Open show wide variation in open access
uptake across disciplines,
<a href="http://www.oxfordjournals.org/news/2006/08/30/full_year_results_from_oxford_op.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/news/2006/08/30/full_year_results_from_oxford_op.html<br>
<br>
</a>[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<br>
<a href="http://www.oxfordjournals.org/for_librarians/update_winter06.pdf" eudora="autourl">
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/for_librarians/update_winter06.pdf<br><br>
</a>[7] Presentation slides, Audio of Panel discussion and final report,
"Asessing the impact<br>
of open access: Preliminary findings from Oxford Journals",
presented at the Oxford<br>
open access workshop, June 2006,
<a href="http://www.oxfordjournals.org/news/oa_workshop.htm" eudora="autourl">
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/news/oa_workshop.htm<br><br>
</a>[8] Kate Stringer, Oxford Journals open access pricing
adjustments,<br>
posted to liblicense-l, Sun, 12 Aug 2007 15:28:30 EDT,
<a href="http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/ListArchives/0708/msg00050.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/ListArchives/0708/msg00050.html<br>
<br>
</a>cf. also comment by Peter Suber on an earlier liblicense-l
announcement,<br>
Oxford reduces prices on 28 hybrid journals<br>
<a href="http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007/07/oxford-reduces-prices-on-26-hybrid.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007/07/oxford-reduces-prices-on-26-hybrid.html<br>
<br>
</a>[9] Martin Richardson: Oxford Open prices adjusted for open access
uptake,<br>
in: Oxford Journals Update for Librarians, Issue 2, Winter 2007/2008<br>
<a href="http://www.oxfordjournals.org/for_librarians/oxford_open.pdf" eudora="autourl">
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/for_librarians/oxford_open.pdf<br><br>
</a>[10] Mandy Hill: Oxford Open prices adjusted for third year in a
row,<br>
in: Oxford Journals Update for Librarians, Autumn 2008<br>
<a href="http://www.oxfordjournals.org/for_librarians/update_autumn08.pdf" eudora="autourl">
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/for_librarians/update_autumn08.pdf<br><br>
</a>[11] Claire Bird: Case Study: Oxford Journals' adventures in open
access,<br>
in: Learned Publishing 21 No. 3 (July 2008), 200-208), DOI:
10.1087/095315108X288910<br>
<a href="http://alpsp.publisher.ingentaconnect.com/content/alpsp/lp/2008/00000021/00000003/art00006" eudora="autourl">
http://alpsp.publisher.ingentaconnect.com/content/alpsp/lp/2008/00000021/00000003/art00006<br>
<br>
</a>[12] Martin Richardson: Oxford Journals makes a change to its pricing
policy,<br>
in: Oxford Journals Update for Librarians, Autumn 2009<br>
<a href="http://www.oxfordjournals.org/for_librarians/update_summer09.pdf" eudora="autourl">
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/for_librarians/update_summer09.pdf<br><br>
</a>[13] Oxford Open Pricing. New charges -- for all papers accepted on
or after 1 December 2009,
<a href="http://www.oxfordjournals.org/oxfordopen/charges.html#New" eudora="autourl">
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/oxfordopen/charges.html#New</a>... [visited
Mon, Oct 19, 2009]<br><br>
[14] Oxford Journals / Frequently Asked Questions: Oxford Open,<br>
<a href="http://www.oxfordjournals.org/faq/oxford_open.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/faq/oxford_open.html<br><br>
</a>[15] The data for this paper have been compiled in the
spreadsheet<br>
<a href="http://www.ub.uni-stuttgart.de/ejournals/OUP_2010_online-only_price_adjustments.xls" eudora="autourl">
http://www.ub.uni-stuttgart.de/ejournals/OUP_2010_online-only_price_adjustments.xls<br>
<br>
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