[GOAL] Re: Hybrid OA/subscription journals — double talk

[Stevan Harnad]

I'll leave it to others to reply to the many questionable details below.
Let me just say that "double-dipping," is not motive term but a very clear,
objective one (though it might well give rise to some emotions!): It means
being paid twice for the same product.

And that's precisely what happens with hybrid-Gold OA: The same publisher
is paid twice for the very same article: once by subscribing institutions,
once by the author. To ask people to think of this as "two different
journals" is double-talk.

On Tue, Jul 2, 2013 at 10:38 AM, Jan Velterop <velterop at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
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