[GOAL] Re: [SCHOLCOMM] RE: Sage Open price now $99

[Frederick Friend]

I echo Nathan Hosburgh's note of caution about this move by Sage. As well as 
the points Nathan makes, we must remember that publishers are competing for 
market share, especially at a time of change in the market. To me the $99 
offer reads like a traditional loss-leader to make an early grab for authors 
and establish Sage Open's position in this market. Obviously we would all 
like to see competition in the level of APCs but I shall be very surprised 
if $99 sets a standard or is maintained for more than a year or so.

Fred Friend
Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL
http://www.friendofopenaccess.org.uk

-----Original Message----- 
From: Hosburgh, Nathan
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2013 1:02 AM
To: Heather Morrison ; LibLicense-L Discussion Forum ; scholcomm at ala.org 
T.F. ; Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Subject: [SCHOLCOMM] RE: Sage Open price now $99

Regarding the comparison with PLOS:

- PLOS charges an author fee of $1,350
- they offer partial/full fee waivers in certain circumstances
- they are a non-profit and their main revenue source is from publication 
fees

http://blogs.plos.org/everyone/authors/

Sage is a for-profit publisher and I imagine their main revenue source is 
subscriptions.  Sage Open is one OA journal from a publisher of many non-OA 
journals.  Sage publishes more than 700 journals spanning the Humanities, 
Social Sciences, and Science, Technology, and Medicine.  Only a few of these 
journal titles appear to be full Gold OA.  Sage offers 'Sage Choice', an OA 
option for authors who wish to make their research articles freely available 
upon publication - this appears to be available for any Sage journal.

"For the majority of journals published by SAGE the fee per article is 
$3,000USD/£1600GPB in Science, Technology and Medical fields, and 
$1,500/£800 in the Humanities and Social Sciences."
http://www.uk.sagepub.com/sagechoice.sp

So, it seems Sage is extending this one OA journal with very reasonable 
publishing fees as a sign of goodwill/PR tool.  The $3,000 article fee would 
probably be a better comparison with the $1,350 charged by PLOS since they 
publish STM material.

Regardless, this is interesting news - thanks for posting.

Nate

Nathan Hosburgh
Electronic Resources Librarian
Assistant Professor
Montana State University Library
P.O. Box 173320
Bozeman, MT 59717-3320
(406) 994-4313
nhosburgh at montana.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: Heather Morrison [mailto:hgmorris at sfu.ca]
Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2013 10:42 AM
To: LibLicense-L Discussion Forum; scholcomm at ala.org T.F.; Global Open 
Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Subject: [SCHOLCOMM] Sage Open price now $99

Sage Open has reduced their open access article processing fee to $99 per 
article. The announcement is posted here:
http://www.uk.sagepub.com/aboutus/press/2013/jan/24_jan.htm

This is not the first OA publisher to come out with prices in this range. 
PeerJ, established by Peter Binfield (formerly PLoS ONE), has open access 
fees on a lifetime membership basis starting from $99.

This raises some interesting questions. For example:

What is the real cost of publishing in an open access online environment? 
Sage OPEN and PeerJ are both commercial companies. If $99 is sufficient to 
cover the costs of coordinating peer review and publication, why would 
anyone pay even the $1,350 charged by PLoS ONE, never mind the $3,000 plus 
charged by some of the traditional publishers under hybrid arrangements?

Is this an indication that transitioning to open access will indeed open up 
the inelastic market for scholarly journals to competition?

best,

Heather G. Morrison, PhD
Freedom for scholarship in the internet age 
http://pages.cmns.sfu.ca/heather-morrison/2012/12/12/freedom-for-scholarship-in-the-internet-age-post-defence-version/