[GOAL] Re: Gold OA: Publication costs and journal impact factors

[Stevan Harnad]

On 2012-10-12, at 10:11 AM, ANDREW Theo wrote:

> 1) hybrid journals generally charge more than full OA journals
> independent of journal impact factor, and
> 2) hybrid journals with high impact factors charge significantly
> more than other types of journal for gold open access. 
> 
> I find this apparent correlation between journal impact factor and
> cost worrying and would welcome feedback. Is this something
> that other people are seeing or have we got our facts wrong?

The outcome is quite predictable, and easily explained:

1. Hybrid journals are just subscription journals that offer Gold
OA as an added option, for a price, per article, over and 
above worldwide subscription revenue.

2. They tend to price the option at about 1/Nthe of their total 
annual subscription revenue for publishing N articles.

3. That 1/Nth is 1/Nth of the revenue for a product that includes
a lot of other products and services (e.g. the print edition) that
are co-bundled with it.

4. Most Gold-only publishers (such as BMC and PLoS) do not
have a print edition, nor its expenses. so they charge less.

5. Most journals are subscription journals.

6. Virtually all the top journals, with the highest impact factors,
are subscription journals.

7. So the correlation between hybrid Gold OA price and 
impact factor is simply because most of the high impact
Gold OA journals are hybrid Gold rather than Gold-only.

8. The price of Gold OA will be much lower once Green
OA has been globally mandated by institutions and funders
worldwide.

9. Global Green will force journals to cut obsolete costs
and products/services and downsize to only the
post-Green OA essentials, which is just the peer review
service.

10. The price of just peer review alone will be even lower once
it is charged as a no-fault service, per round of review,
irrepective of whether the outcome is acceptance, call for
revision, or rejection. 

(My guess is that post-Green Gold will cost no more than
$100-$200 per round of review, compared to $1000-$5000+ 
for hybrid Gold OA today. And the no-fault condition will ensure 
that journals referee to maximize quality, not to maximize
acceptance revenue.)

Moral: It is premature to pay for Gold OA at today's prices,
especially for hybrid Gold OA.

Mandate and provide Green OA; and when the price has
come down and all journals are Gold-only, Gold OA will
become affordable as just a peer review service, paid for 
out of a fraction of institutions' annual subscription cancellation 
savings).

Meanwhile the world will have OA (Green) at long last.

Stevan Harnad
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