[GOAL] Re: Interview with Harvard's Stuart Shieber

[David Prosser]

I must admit that intuitively (and with no real evidence!) I wonder about the 50% figure for the proportion of Gold OA articles for which no APC payment has been made.  The reason being that the biggest OA journals and publishers - PLoS One, BMC, Hindawi - all charge APCs and so although the proportion of journals may be 50%, I would guess that the proportion of articles is significantly less.

But these large publishers are mainly in the life and medical sciences and if one looks at other disciplines the ratio may be closer to 50%.  The reason I think this is an important distinction to make is that we often hear objections from arts and humanities scholars that they cannot support Gold OA as they do not have the funds to pay for APC.  But in their fields (and others) there are many, many Gold OA journals that make no publication charges.  This is where the 'Gold OA journals charge APCs' shorthand becomes rather unhelpful.

I must admit I am completely bemused by Alicia's comments.  She suggests that Elsevier has pioneered a number of business models that are now being clammed by the OA community as being Gold OA.  To help could she give, say, three concrete examples?

Best wishes

David




On 12 Dec 2012, at 23:15, Hans Pfeiffenberger wrote:

> Hi Alicia,
> 
> an hour before your mail, I suggested a blog article which seems to say that about 50% of all gold OA journals do not ask for APCs at all and APCs were indeed not paid for by half of all Gold OA articles. 
> 
> This is not reconcilable with the 3-4% you report. Are we perhaps talking about completely different ratios?
> 
> best,
> 
> Hans
> 
> for your convenience: the link, again, was: http://svpow.com/2012/12/10/what-does-it-cost-to-publish-a-gold-open-access-article/
> 
> 
> Am 12.12.12 13:59, schrieb Wise, Alicia (ELS-OXF):
>> Hi Richard,
>>  
>> My colleague does an in-depth annual study on the uptake of different business models, and suggests that this figure was 3-4% of total articles at the start of 2012.  Elsevier, and I’m sure a wide array of other publishers, have used a range of business models to produce free-to-read journals for decades. I find it very interesting that these models are now claimed by the open access community as ‘gold oa’ titles although I suppose that’s much less of a mouthful than ‘free-at-the-point-of-use’ titles! 
>>  
>> With kind wishes,
>>  
>> Alicia
>>  
>> From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf Of Richard Poynder
>> Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2012 8:42 AM
>> To: 'Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)'
>> Subject: [GOAL] Re: Interview with Harvard's Stuart Shieber
>>  
>> Thanks for the comments David. Your point about not equating Gold OA with APCs is well taken.
>>  
>> But it also invites a question I think: do we know what percentage of papers(not journals, but papers) published Gold OA today incur no APC charge, and what do we anticipate this percentage becoming in a post-Finch world?
>>  
>> Richard
>>  
>> From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf Of David Prosser
>> Sent: 11 December 2012 19:53
>> To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
>> Subject: [GOAL] Re: Interview with Harvard's Stuart Shieber
>>  
>> As ever, Richard has put together a fascinating and entertaining interview, and augmented it with a really useful essay on the current state of OA policies.
>>  
>> I have a small quibble.  On page two, Richard writes:
>>  
>> "...or by means of gold OA, in which researchers (or more usually their funders) pay publishers an article-processing charge (APC) to ensure that their paper is made freely available on the Web at the time of publication."
>>  
>> APCs make up just one business model that can be used to support Gold OA.  Gold is OA through journals - it makes no assumption about how the costs of publication are paid for.  I think it is helpful to ensure that we do not equate Gold with APCs.
>>  
>> David
>>  
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> On 3 Dec 2012, at 18:51, Richard Poynder wrote:
>>  
>> 
>> Stuart Shieber is the Welch Professor of Computer Science at Harvard University, Faculty Co-Director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Director of Harvard’s Office for Scholarly Communication (OSC),  and chief architect of the Harvard Open Access (OA) Policy — a 2008 initiative that has seen Harvard become a major force in the OA movement.
>>  
>> http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/the-oa-interviews-harvards-stuart.html
>>  
>> <ATT00001..txt>
>>  
>> Elsevier Limited. Registered Office: The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford, OX5 1GB, United Kingdom, Registration No. 1982084 (England and Wales).
>> 
>> 
>> 
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>> 
> 
> <ATT00001..txt>

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