[GOAL] Re: Effect of Green OA on Publishers

[Stevan Harnad]

See: 
Plans by universities and research funders to pay the costs
 of Open Access Publishing ("Gold OA") are premature. Funds 
are short; 80% of journals (including virtually all the top journals) 
are still subscription-based, tying up the potential funds to pay 
for Gold OA; the asking price for Gold OA is still high; and there 
is concern that paying to publish may inflate acceptance rates 
and lower quality standards. What is needed now is for universities 
and funders to mandate OA self-archiving (of authors' final 
peer-reviewed drafts, immediately upon acceptance for publication) 
("Green OA"). That will provide immediate OA; and if and when 
universal Green OA should go on to make subscriptions 
unsustainable (because users are satisfied with just the 
Green OA versions) that will in turn induce journals to cut 
costs (print edition, online edition, access-provision, archiving), 
downsize to just providing the service of peer review, and 
convert to the Gold OA cost-recovery model; meanwhile, 
the subscription cancellations will have released the funds 
to pay these residual service costs. The natural way to charge 
for the service of peer review then will be on a "no-fault basis," 
with the author's institution or funder paying for each round of 
refereeing, regardless of outcome (acceptance, revision/re-refereeing, 
or rejection). This will minimize cost while protecting against 
inflated acceptance rates and decline in quality standards.

($250 per round of refereeing sounds reasonable.)

Harnad, S. (2010) No-Fault Peer Review Charges: 
The Price of Selectivity Need Not Be Access Denied 
or Delayed. D-Lib Magazine 16 (7/8).
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/21348/

On 2012-05-30, at 12:06 PM, David Prosser wrote:

> Peter
> 
> I'm not going to argue the piblishers' case for them, but...
> 
> 1. This is cost per submission, while the hybrid OA publication cost is per published paper.  A journal that rejects a lot of papers will obviously rack-up a lot of multiples of $250.  (This raises the whole issue of submission charges - if a journal can't go open access because of the cost of rejecting 95% of papers then could it consider a submission charge to cover it.  Would people be willing to pay $250 to be considered by Nature and Science?)
> 
> 2. I think the $250 was a direct cost and so something more should be added for overheads.
> 
> 3. This is just organisation of peer review.  The study did look at other costs, but as there were so many problems with getting comparable costs from publishers for online hosting the study was not able to provide a total cost-per-article.
> 
> 4. Disappointingly, but not unsurprisingly, I think a lot of publishers set hybrid OA charges at a level to try to cover their current revenue per papers.  That's why hybrid OA charges tend to be higher than those for 'born OA' journals.  It's also why, I suspect, hybrid has never taken off (except in a few cases) - it's just too expensive.  If you want OA there are cheaper - and often better - alternatives.
> 
> David
> 
> 
> 
> On 30 May 2012, at 16:46, Peter Murray-Rust wrote:
> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 9:36 PM, David Prosser <david.prosser at rluk.ac.uk> wrote:
>> Dear All
>> 
>> 
>> An economic analysis also suggested that the cost of organising peer review is $250 per submission - an interesting factoid.
>> 
>> Thanks David - this is a very interesting fact(oid). I have always found it hard to understand why a hybrid OA publication should cost 5000 USD [*]. If the peer-review organization is the key thing and the monopoly that the publishers assert, then everything else can go to the market.
>> 
>> Hey! I can create a PDF myself!  I can create images. I can write an abstract. I put the paper on the web. I can do this myself or contract it out. This would lead to a better universal quality of publications. And all of this should be possible for a few hundred dollars - let's say anoth 250 USD on top. Limit of 500 USD.
>> 
>> [*] So the rest of the 5000 USD is profit (and the ruinous cost in the UK of stamps for first class letters).
>>  
>> P.
>> 
>> -- 
>> Peter Murray-Rust
>> Reader in Molecular Informatics
>> Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
>> University of Cambridge
>> CB2 1EW, UK
>> +44-1223-763069
>> <ATT00001..txt>
> 
> _______________________________________________
> GOAL mailing list
> GOAL at eprints.org
> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal