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

Thu Dec 13 09:32:22 GMT 2012

My suspicion is that the figure Alicia cites is the number of articles
published OA as a percentage of the total number of articles published
(suggesting that 96-97% of papers are still being published in subscription
journals).  If that is right, then we would seem to have two different
questions:

1)      First, how many articles are currently published OA rather than
using the subscription model. If this is the question that Alicia was
answering then her estimate would seem to be lower than previous estimates
(In June 2011, for instance, the estimate was 10%
(http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/30686/title/Open-and-
growing/flagPost/55748/), and earlier this year it was estimated at 17%
(http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/10/124). It would certainly be
useful to have further data from Alicia in order to understand why her
figure is lower. 

2)      Second, there is my question, which was “what percentage of
papers(not journals, but papers) published Gold OA today incur no APC
charge”. Hans referred to a blog post by Mike Taylor which cites a 2010
study. This, reports Taylor, found that half of the authors who had
published in an OA journal had paid no APC at all. 

Taylor also cites a Solomon and Björk analysis
(http://www.openaccesspublishing.org/apc2/preprint.pdf) which found that the
average APC paid was $906. I believe this latter study included a number of
publishers based in the developing world, which charge lower APCs. It also
appears to have used for its sample quite a few publishers that are included
on Jeffrey Beall’s list of predatory publishers. 

Richard Poynder

From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf
Of Hans Pfeiffenberger
Sent: 12 December 2012 23:15
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Subject: [GOAL] Re: Interview with Harvard's Stuart Shieber

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>
[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>
[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,  <http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/sshieber> Faculty
Co-Director of the  <http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/sshieber> Berkman
Center for Internet and Society, Director of Harvard’s Office for Scholarly
Communication ( <http://osc.hul.harvard.edu/> OSC),  and chief architect of
the Harvard Open Access ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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).

_______________________________________________
GOAL mailing list
GOAL at eprints.org <mailto:GOAL at eprints.org> 
http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pipermail/goal/attachments/20121213/a0b9fb02/attachment.html 