[GOAL] Hybrid OA/subscription journals — double or quits?

[Jan Velterop]

Hybrid journals – journals that combine toll access to some articles with open access to others – do not generally enjoy a good press. Terms such as 'double-dipping' are frequently used. This is not justified, as a general rule. 

The difficulty is that even a basic understanding of how a subscription system works is often lacking outside (and even sometimes inside echelons of) the publishing community. For example, deciding on the price of subscriptions depends on a number of prior assumptions. There are possibly more than these three, but they are important ones: 
1) how many subscriptions do we expect to be able to sell; 
2) how many submissions will we get and how many of those will be accepted for publication (i.e. what will the costs be); and 
3) what margins can we expect to contribute to overheads and profit (or surplus, in the case of a not-for-profit publisher).

Typically, a publisher will have a portfolio of journals of which some do well, some just break even, and some make a loss if all costs, including overheads, are fully allocated. Hybrid journals will be found in all three categories. So what does 'double-dipping' mean? Are loss-making hybrid journals 'half-dipping'? Is 'double-half-dipping' — in the case of those loss making journals — just 'single dipping'? Does it even make sense to think in those terms? 

I think not. If a rebate on the subscription price is expected for a hybrid journal with OA articles in it, would one also expect to pay a premium on the subscription price of a loss-making hybrid journal? The objective way to look at it is to see the subscription price as the price to be paid for the non-OA articles that are published in a hybrid journal, simply ignoring the OA articles (which are freebies, to the subscriber). That subscription price may be perceived as low or high — whether or not expressed in subscription price per non-OA article — but that is what a subscription to a hybrid journal is: a subscription to the non-OA content. Incidentally, comparing subscription prices per article (p/a) across a library collection will show a very wide range, and the inclusion or exclusion of hybrid journals is not likely to make any difference whatsoever in the distribution of p/a in that range.

It may be helpful to think of a hybrid journal as twin journals sharing the same title, Editor, Editorial Board and editorial policy: one subscription-based, and one OA. 

The OA articles in a hybrid journal are just as much OA as in any OA journal as long as they give the reader/user the same rights (of access and re-use), i.e. as long as they are covered by a licence such as the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY) and not the CC Attribution Non-Commercial License (CC-BY-NC). Applying CC-BY-NC licences, which does happen, is likely to be a sign of insecurity on the part of a publisher (hanging on to a 'control' element that is wholly inappropriate for OA) or of a lack of understanding as to what the purpose of open access actually is. 

As said, hybrid journals do not generally enjoy a good press, but I have heard positive comments about them as well in the scientific community. Those relate to the notion that the editorial policy (the acceptance/rejection policy) of hybrid journals is not influenced by the potential financial contribution coming from APCs, where the 'open choice' is given as an option only after the article has passed peer review and is accepted (which typically the point where the option is presented to the author). I don't think acceptance and rejection policies of any respectable OA journal are influenced by the prospect of authors paying anyway, and I certainly don't know of any such practices at the OA publishers I am familiar with, but it is an extra assurance hybrid journals offer that that is indeed not the case for them.

In any event, 'double-dipping' is an emotive term the use of which is not conducive to a rational debate.

Jan Velterop