<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Stevan has been consistent over the years in his message that we should not discuss Gold OA at all until we have 100% Green OA. And yet some of us still insist on doing so!<div><br></div><div>My point was to highlight a particular data point for 2012. Are there quibbles? Of course. Does it give us the whole picture? Of course not. But for those interested in the transition mechanism it is, as I say, a data point.</div><div><br></div><div>But Steven makes a central assumption that is misleading - his point 6. It is certainly true that in a mixed economy institutions will pay both subscriptions and publication fees (where such fees exist). But Steven implies that this is for the same content. With the exception of some hybrid OA papers (which are in the minority) this is not the case. One paper published in an OA journal is, literally, one less paper in a subscription journal. All the librarians on the list know that one of the justifications for subscription and big deal price rises is increasing volume of content - either within current journals or through the launch of new journals. </div><div><br></div><div>Naturally, there is not a simple one-to-one relationship between volume increase and price increase, but there is a strong relationship. OA is taking thousands of papers out of the subscription model and therefore reducing price pressures on subscriptions. Put simply, if these OA papers had been published in subscription journals then subscription prices would have been higher. This is substitution, not addition. (This is obvious if you think what would have happened if those 190k OA papers had been in subscription journals - do we think that the publishers would have just absorbed the costs and accepted reduced profits/surpluses?)</div><div><br></div><div>So, even in a transition period it is clear that there are cost savings in OA Gold publishing.</div><div><br></div><div>David</div><div><br><div>
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<br><div><div>On 4 May 2013, at 14:39, Stevan Harnad wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite">Comparing the average price per article of Gold OA today with the average subscription publisher revenue per article today is uninformative and misleading.<div><br></div><div>1. These are averages across many different forms of Gold OA: (i) subsidy- or subscription-based Gold OA (no author fee), (ii) hybrid subscription/Gold OA, (iii) Gold-only OA, (iv) junk Gold OA (no or next to no peer review).</div>
<div><br></div><div>2. They are averages across all journal qualities. </div><div><br></div><div>3. They are averages calculated at a time when subscriptions are still in the vast majority, and cannot be canceled until/unless their articles are accessible in some other way.</div>
<div><br></div><div>4. Hence not only do the (arbitrary) asking prices for Gold vary widely, but they vary widely in the quality and service they deliver.</div><div><br></div><div>5. Subscription journals vary too, but it is not at all clear (and indeed very unlikely) that the Gold subset today matches their quality distribution.</div>
<div><br></div><div>6. While un-cancellable subscriptions still prevail, Gold OA is just a supplement, not a substitute, it entails double-payment by institutions (subscriptions + Gold) and even double-dipping by publishers (for hybrid Gold).</div>
<div><br></div><div>7. The missing factor in all of this is the potential of mandatory Green OA to first provide OA at no extra cost, and once it reaches 100% globally, to make journals <i>cancellable</i>, so they are forced to cut costs by downsizing to peer-review alone.</div>
<div><br></div><div>8. Post-Green Gold OA will then be provided at a fair, sustainable price, paid (and not double-paid) out of a fraction of the institutional subscription cancellation savings.</div><div><br></div><div>None of this can be calculated on the basis of averaging the price per article of Gold today -- but we can be sure that the post-Green cost will be substantially lower than the average publisher revenue per article for subscriptions today, pre-Green.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Stevan Harnad<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 10:18 AM, David Prosser <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:david.prosser@rluk.ac.uk" target="_blank">david.prosser@rluk.ac.uk</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word"><div>(Cross-posted)</div><div><br></div>The Economist has published another piece on open access publishing:<br>
<br><a href="http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21577035-open-access-scientific-publishing-gaining-ground-free-all" target="_blank">http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21577035-open-access-scientific-publishing-gaining-ground-free-all</a><br>
<br>I was struck by one paragraph in particular:<br><br><blockquote style="margin:0 0 0 40px;border:none;padding:0px">Outsell, a Californian consultancy, estimates that open-access journals generated $172m in 2012. That was just 2.8% of the total revenue journals brought their publishers (some $6 billion a year), but it was up by 34% from 2011 and is expected to reach $336m in 2015. The number of open-access papers is forecast to grow from 194,000 (out of a total of 1.7m publications) to 352,000 in the same period.</blockquote>
<br><br><div>By my reckoning this means that in 2012 the revenue breakdown was :</div><div><br></div><div>For Open Access = $890 per paper ($172m / 194k papers)</div><div>For Sub Access = $3,500 per paper ($6 billion / 1.7m papers) </div>
<div><br></div><div>If the 194,000 papers published in OA had been published in subscription journals the extra costs could have been around $500 million ((3500-890)x194000). If you believe that all of these papers would probably have been published whatever the business model you could recast this as the worldwide community having made a saving of $500 million.</div>
<div><br></div><div>If all 1.7m papers published in 2012 had been OA at $890 per paper the $6 billion a year business would shrink to a $1.5 billion a year business.</div><div><br></div><div>There are lots of assumptions here (not least that my maths are correct), but it is clear that </div>
<div><br></div><div>a) the direct costs of publishing in OA journals are current significantly lower than publishing in subscriptions journals</div><div><br></div><div>b) the average cost per paper in OA is significantly lower than the roughly £1,450 per article that represented the break-even point for the UK under which the UK would save money if we moved totally to OA</div>
<div><br></div><div>c) the average is much, much lower than the typical price being offered for 'hybrid' OA. </div><div><br></div><div>It would be very easy to construct an argument that the $890 per paper figure is not scaleable to all of journal publishing, but it is interesting that, at least for the moment, the figure is so low.</div>
<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><div><br></div><div>David</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><div><br></div><br></div></font></span></div><br>_______________________________________________<br>
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