[GOAL] How to manage APC waivers and discounts

Wed Sep 11 15:25:26 BST 2019

Dear all,

thank you for bringing this up again. I´m not sure if you could compare the market behaviour of demanders and suppliers on the market for houses or cars with the market for academic publications. There are some similarities, but there are some differences in the market structures as well. And in the end, the prices, which are paid by the consumers, are a result of demand and supply and the choices and decisions, the players on a market are making.

If I would buy a car, a house or if I want to publish an academic article I would check my preferences, my budget and the prices. Comparing prices and services of publishers is helpful for my decision. If I would have the choice to pay 4,500 EUROs for my article in  e.g. Nature Communications or in a journal of a predatory publisher, I would choose the first option like most of us.

But pretty sure my article would not be accepted by Nature Communications, what would be my next decision? Maybe I would choose a mega journal like PLOS One, a OA journal in my discipline, or maybe I will choose a for me cost free OJS journal or a repository, my academic institution is providing for me? Or maybe my academic community, which I´m in, is providing me options to publish my article? Or maybe a funder is taking over the APC for me, if I will publish in his journals?

It does not really matter what my decisions are, but what I want to say with this is, that academic authors, funders and libraries, which are taking over the costs for their institutions, have options and can make decisions. And the more they can do so, the better ...

Best,
Dirk

Von: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] Im Auftrag von Heather Morrison
Gesendet: Dienstag, 10. September 2019 16:53
An: Ulrich Herb <u.herb at scidecode.com>; Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <goal at eprints.org>
Betreff: Re: [GOAL] How to manage APC waivers and discounts

Ulrich raises an important point. Those of us who assumed transparency in pricing would inspire lower pricing may have been mistaken.

Another example:

When homes are for sale here, the list price is publicly available, and some brokers advertise their percentages. Housing crises in cities like Toronto and Vancouver (rapid inflation due largely to speculation leading to unaffordable housing) have emerged in a context of transparent pricing.

best,

Dr. Heather Morrison
Associate Professor, School of Information Studies, University of Ottawa
Professeur Agrégé, École des Sciences de l'Information, Université d'Ottawa
Principal Investigator, Sustaining the Knowledge Commons, a SSHRC Insight Project
sustainingknowledgecommons.org
Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca<mailto:Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca>
https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/?lang=en#/members/706
[On research sabbatical July 1, 2019 - June 30, 2020]
________________________________
From: Ulrich Herb <u.herb at scidecode.com<mailto:u.herb at scidecode.com>>
Sent: Tuesday, September 10, 2019 6:12:27 AM
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <goal at eprints.org<mailto:goal at eprints.org>>
Cc: Heather Morrison <Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca<mailto:Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca>>
Subject: Re: [GOAL] How to manage APC waivers and discounts

Attention : courriel externe | external email

Dear Heather,

even though I share your thoughts on APCs, I doubt that transparent
pricing will always lower prices. Conversely, it can also lead to higher
prices, e.g. by better market analysis. If I remember right, Australia's
FuelWatch (an open-access database for fuel prices) did not cause prices
to fall. But maybe someone here knows more.

Best regards,

Ulrich Herb

Am 2019-09-04 19:41, schrieb Heather Morrison:
> Exactly, Lisa. Scholarly communication does not have to be a market,
> and I argue it is better if it is not.
>
> Dr. Heather Morrison
> Associate Professor, School of Information Studies, University of
> Ottawa
> Professeur Agrégé, École des Sciences de l'Information, Université
> d'Ottawa
> Principal Investigator, Sustaining the Knowledge Commons, a SSHRC
> Insight Project
> sustainingknowledgecommons.org
> Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca<mailto:Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca>
> https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/?lang=en#/members/706
> [On research sabbatical July 1, 2019 - June 30, 2020]
>
> -------------------------
>
> From: goal-bounces at eprints.org<mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org> <goal-bounces at eprints.org<mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org>> on behalf of
> Lisa Hinchliffe <lisalibrarian at gmail.com<mailto:lisalibrarian at gmail.com>>
> Sent: Wednesday, September 4, 2019 1:28:40 PM
> To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <goal at eprints.org<mailto:goal at eprints.org>>
> Subject: Re: [GOAL] How to manage APC waivers and discounts
>
> Attention : courriel externe | external email
>
> I agree these are interesting projects/products/goods. However, as
> examples they aren't examples of a market are they?
>
> ___
>
> Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe
> lisalibrarian at gmail.com<mailto:lisalibrarian at gmail.com>
>
> On Wed, Sep 4, 2019 at 12:22 PM Heather Morrison
> <Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca<mailto:Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca>> wrote:
>
>> Two examples of transparent pricing:
>>
>> SSHRC Aid to Scholarly Journals (Canad):
>>
> http://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/funding-financement/programs-programmes/scholarly_journals-revues_savantes-eng.aspx
>> [1]
>>
>> This is a peer-reviewed journal subsidy program. The $ value,
>> journal eligibility, application and review process, are all clearly
>> articulated. Canada is not unusual in subsidizing journal
>> publishing. In areas such as the social sciences, humanities and
>> arts, this is necessary because local knowledge is important
>> (everywhere). Law is an important topic in every country, but
>> Canadian law is most relevant in Canada and for scholarship to
>> flourish in this area, scholars need publication venues. This is
>> true of history, culture/arts, local social and environmental
>> issues. Some knowledge is universal; some knowledge is specific to a
>> particular region, group, environment, etc.
>>
>> One key benefit of this model is cost. The base - maximum per
>> journal is $30 - $35,000 per year (Cdn). At the mid-point of
>> $32,500, a journal publishing 40 peer-reviewed articles per year
>> would receive about $850 Canadian per article. Per-journal funding
>> eliminates the need to count articles and gives journals flexibility
>> to increase or decrease volume based on need. The funding in
>> Canadian dollars gives journals budgeting stability, as costs such
>> as local journal hosting and staffing costs are in Canadian dollars
>> as well. Currency fluctuations are a problem in budgeting for many
>> journals. As Salhab & I discussed here,
>>
> https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2015/05/13/how-a-flat-apc-with-no-price-increase-for-3-years-can-be-a-6-77-price-increase/
>>
>> PLOS One's flat pricing in USD over 3 years was in effect a 6 - 77%
>> price increase for authors and funders based on country and local
>> currency.
>>
>> To illustrate the potential with a full flip using this kind of
>> approach:
>>
>> The Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN) spends approximately
>> $100 million per year on subscriptions / purchase and some OA
>> transitional funding. CRKN is just one of the academic library
>> sources of funding in Canada. There are other regional consortia,
>> such as the Ontario Council of University Libraries. Also, large
>> university libraries such as the University of Ottawa and University
>> of Toronto also spend considerably sums.
>>
>> If the CRKN's 100 million per year were transformed to support a
>> subsidy program modeled on that of SSHRC, this amount could
>> subsidize over 3,000 scholarly journals (at the rate in between the
>> base and maximum).  This example is meant just as an illustration;
>> we also need to fund book publication and new forms of publication
>> such as research blog archiving and data publication, but it is not
>> clear that Canada would need 3,000 journals and there are there
>> existing sources of funding as mentioned in the paragraph above.
>>
>> Another important advantage of this model is ensuring academic
>> leadership and hence prioritizing quality.  Journal-level
>> peer-review, by academics, greatly reduces the likelihood of
>> predatory publishing. Journal publishing by academic editors whose
>> promotions depend on the quality of their scholarship is more likely
>> to prioritize quality than commercial outfits seeking APC $ for
>> profit. B
>>
>> This model also provides local jobs and leadership opportunities
>> for local academics and their universities. Further detail from
>> publishers of such journals via interviews is available here:
>> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/leap.1015 [2]
>>
>> Another example of transparent costing is the Public Knowledge
>> Project's Open Journal Systems. The software per se is open source
>> and free for anyone to download, use, and contribute to the
>> community. PKP also offers a journal hosting service; prices are
>> posted on the website that detail what is provided for each service:
>> https://pkpservices.sfu.ca/content/journal-hosting [3]
>>
>> There are other examples, and I encourage others on the list to
>> point to them. I am providing just a couple of examples that I am
>> familiar with and consider good models. These are not perfect
>> models, there is always room for improvement, but good models that
>> are easily overlooked. This is because academic-led publishing is
>> led by academics who will tend to go to their disciplinary
>> conferences and participate in disciplinary discussions, so you will
>> not meet many of them at conferences like OASPA, ALPSPS, SSP, etc.,
>> or hear from them on the GOAL discussion list.
>>
>> In the interests of full disclosure, my funder (SSRHC) is
>> responsible for the Aid to Scholarly Journals program and provided
>> the seed funding for what is now the Public Knowledge Project. As of
>> a few years ago, about half the fully open access journals in the
>> world were using PKP's Open Journal Systems, so I argue that this
>> modest research funding was a very valuable global contribution
>> (thanks to founder John Willinsky, now at Stanford).
>>
>> best,
>>
>> Dr. Heather Morrison
>>
>> Associate Professor, School of Information Studies, University of
>> Ottawa
>>
>> Professeur Agrégé, École des Sciences de l'Information,
>> Université d'Ottawa
>>
>> Principal Investigator, Sustaining the Knowledge Commons, a SSHRC
>> Insight Project
>>
>> sustainingknowledgecommons.org [4]
>>
>> Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca<mailto:Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca>
>>
>> https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/?lang=en#/members/706
>>
>> [On research sabbatical July 1, 2019 - June 30, 2020]
>>
>> -------------------------
>>
>> From: goal-bounces at eprints.org<mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org> <goal-bounces at eprints.org<mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org>> on behalf
>> of Lisa Hinchliffe <lisalibrarian at gmail.com<mailto:lisalibrarian at gmail.com>>
>> Sent: Wednesday, September 4, 2019 12:11 PM
>> To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <goal at eprints.org<mailto:goal at eprints.org>>
>> Subject: Re: [GOAL] How to manage APC waivers and discounts
>>
>> Attention : courriel externe | external email
>>
>> With this analysis, I'm not sure there is such a thing as a
>> transparent market then. Is there?
>>
>> ___
>>
>> Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe
>> lisalibrarian at gmail.com<mailto:lisalibrarian at gmail.com>
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 4, 2019 at 11:01 AM Heather Morrison
>> <Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca<mailto:Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca>> wrote:
>>
>> hi Lisa,
>>
>> Thanks for the question.
>>
>> If one individual author, institution, or funder looks at the
>> publisher's website and sees a price (list price), but do not know
>> that others do not pay that price, that is a lack of transparency.
>>
>> This is similar to going to buy a car and thinking the sticker price
>> is the price, not knowing that negotiation is common or how much to
>> ask for. The savvy buyer (perhaps a rich person who buys lots of
>> cars) may pay less and/or get more options than the non-savvy buyer.
>>
>> If publishers are negotiating pricing with institutions and funders,
>> and list price is the starting point for negotiations, this is an
>> incentive to increase the list price for the next negotiation. For
>> example, double the price so you can offer the next group buyer a
>> 50% discount. The early bird institution / funder can argue for
>> historical funding to keep prices down but newer entrants are stuck
>> at a higher historical basis. OpenAPC does help in making what
>> people pay open, assuming that downstream negotiators are aware of
>> this. Publishers have no incentive to educate on this point.
>>
>> These kinds of strategies were and probably still are used for
>> subscriptions, and are not unique to publishing.
>>
>> This is understandable, but the result is a non-transparent market
>> that seems likely to continue the dysfunctional elements of the
>> subscriptions market into OA.
>>
>> List members who feel they do not have the background to understand
>> things like business and nonprofit approaches to pricing strategy
>> probably know more than they realize.
>>
>> Some common real-world examples:
>>
>> When you sell a house or a car, you will probably seek the highest
>> price you can, what the market will bear. This is the same strategy
>> Elsevier uses when they quote you the highest price they think you
>> will pay, or MDPI charges the highest APC they think authors will
>> pay. In any of these cases, the seller may start with a high quote
>> as it is easy to reduce the price but very difficult to increase it
>> after a low initial offer.
>>
>> When a government funds a public university on the basis of the
>> number of FTE students, on the assumption that it cost x amount to
>> provide an education, that is cost-based budgeting. Similarly, if a
>> research institution receives x annual funding (from a government or
>> philanthropic institution), on the assumption that this will
>> accomplish certain research goals, that is cost-based budgeting.
>>
>> In scholarly publishing, buyers (libraries, institutions, funders)
>> tend to be under cost-based budgeting while commercial publishers
>> (subscriptions or OA) work under market conditions. This is a
>> fundamental conflict that led to dysfunction in the subscriptions
>> market (serials crisis) and may do the same in OA, assuming
>> commercial market-oriented publishers.
>>
>> Potential remedies include non-commercial approaches such as library
>> hosted publishing services and modest cost-based journal subsidies,
>> and institutional open access archives and new services based on
>> them.
>>
>> best,
>>
>> Dr. Heather Morrison
>> Associate Professor, School of Information Studies, University of
>> Ottawa
>> Professeur Agrégé, École des Sciences de l'Information,
>> Université d'Ottawa
>> Principal Investigator, Sustaining the Knowledge Commons, a SSHRC
>> Insight Project
>> sustainingknowledgecommons.org [4]
>> Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca<mailto:Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca>
>> https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/?lang=en#/members/706
>> [On research sabbatical July 1, 2019 - June 30, 2020]
>>
>> -------------------------
>>
>> From: goal-bounces at eprints.org<mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org> <goal-bounces at eprints.org<mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org>> on behalf
>> of Lisa Hinchliffe <lisalibrarian at gmail.com<mailto:lisalibrarian at gmail.com>>
>> Sent: Wednesday, September 4, 2019 10:51:10 AM
>> To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <goal at eprints.org<mailto:goal at eprints.org>>
>> Subject: Re: [GOAL] How to manage APC waivers and discounts
>>
>> Attention : courriel externe | external email
>>
>> Heather, can you explain a bit your claim that different people
>> paying different prices means the market isn't transparent? Is that
>> inherently non-transparent? Or, are you suggesting the issue is that
>> it isn't publicly known what the different prices are? Lisa
>>
>> ___
>>
>> Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe
>> lisalibrarian at gmail.com<mailto:lisalibrarian at gmail.com>
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 4, 2019 at 9:37 AM Heather Morrison
>> <Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca<mailto:Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca>> wrote:
>>
>> Dirk says with respect to OpenAPCs: "the real costs for academic
>> institutions and funders...deviate from list prices for various
>> reasons".
>>
>> If correct, as I assume it is, this is not a transparent market. For
>> example, I assume this means authors who are not covered by
>> institutions or funders are expected to pay list price (unless they
>> negotiate an individual waiver), and different institutions and
>> funders pay different prices for the same service, based on their
>> ability to negotiate.
>>
>> The information on a publisher's website gives the list price and
>> often has a waiver of 50% for authors from low to middle income
>> countries. Is this half of a price that no one in the richest
>> institutions actually pays? Is it sometimes more than a rich
>> institution actually pays for one of its authors?
>>
>> best,
>>
>> Dr. Heather Morrison
>> Associate Professor, School of Information Studies, University of
>> Ottawa
>> Professeur Agrégé, École des Sciences de l'Information,
>> Université d'Ottawa
>> Principal Investigator, Sustaining the Knowledge Commons, a SSHRC
>> Insight Project
>> sustainingknowledgecommons.org [4]
>> Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca<mailto:Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca>
>> https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/?lang=en#/members/706
>> [On research sabbatical July 1, 2019 - June 30, 2020]
>>
>> -------------------------
>>
>> From: goal-bounces at eprints.org<mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org> <goal-bounces at eprints.org<mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org>> on behalf
>> of Pieper, Dirk <dirk.pieper at uni-bielefeld.de<mailto:dirk.pieper at uni-bielefeld.de>>
>> Sent: Wednesday, September 4, 2019 4:30:09 AM
>> To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <goal at eprints.org<mailto:goal at eprints.org>>
>> Subject: Re: [GOAL] How to manage APC waivers and discounts
>>
>> Attention : courriel externe | external email
>>
>> Dear Heather,
>>
>> thank you, I fully agree. Just some additional remarks:
>>
>> The monitoring of publishers list prices is very important, the
>> approach of OpenAPC is to monitor the real costs per article for
>> academic institutions and funders, which deviate from list prices
>> for various reasons. Both ways should be regarded as complementary.
>>
>> I also see the biggest challenge at the moment in creating the
>> above mentioned cost transparency for articles within transformative
>> agreements, especially if they are mixed up with costs for reading
>> access and when historical subscription expenditures of consortia
>> and participating institutions are involved. APCs and so called PAR
>> fees are different of course but in the end they both put a price
>> tag on an OA article. Funders and academic institutions then can
>> make their decisions, which way of OA transition or which publishers
>> they can support with public money within their limited budgets.
>>
>> Leaving out authors is always a mess. I remember editors in our
>> university, who could not read their own journals, because we as a
>> library were not able to pay the license for reading ...
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Dirk
>>
>> Von: goal-bounces at eprints.org<mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org> [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] Im
>> Auftrag von Heather Morrison
>> Gesendet: Dienstag, 3. September 2019 21:07
>> An: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <goal at eprints.org<mailto:goal at eprints.org>>
>> Betreff: Re: [GOAL] How to manage APC waivers and discounts
>>
>> Every model for transitioning to open access has its advantages and
>> disadvantages.
>>
>> One of the potential benefits of the article processing charge
>> method is transparency, which in theory could lead to more price and
>> cost sensibility as Dirk describes. I was more optimistic about this
>> potential in the past than I am today. OA journals and publishers'
>> websites are full of information about APCs being paid for by
>> institutions, funders, not out of authors' pockets. If funders pay
>> for APCs, the cost may be transparent to authors and universities,
>> but who pays attention when someone else is paying? In the
>> transformative (subscriptions + open access) deals, APCs are no more
>> transparent than subscriptions, and based on my prior experience
>> negotiating licensing deals, these combined deals may make both the
>> subscriptions and the APC costs more obscure, because ultimately,
>> buyers and sellers of big deals are agreeing on a bundled price
>> rather than a cost structure, never mind a transparent cost
>> structure. Such deals have a strong potential to alter the APC
>> market, because low APCs might seem to publishers as a weakness in
>> negotiating. Also, for traditional scholarly publishers who have
>> extensive back lists of works for which they own copyright (a major
>> financial asset), the best case scenario is complete failure of the
>> open access movement. New publishers who rely on APCs (e.g. PLOS,
>> Hindawi, MDPI) have incentive to transform the entire system, but
>> not traditional highly profitable publishers like SpringerNature and
>> Elsevier.
>>
>> One of the strong drawbacks of APC is leaving out authors who
>> cannot afford the fees. This is not just authors in low income
>> countries. As Peter Murray-Rust helpfully pointed out recently,
>> active retiree scholars like PMR do not have funding for APCs,
>> either. This is also likely to be true of emerging scholars in the
>> developed world who are in the process of trying to establish a
>> career. Even if every university and research institution covered
>> APCs for regular full-time researchers, it is unlikely that future
>> such researchers would be covered.
>>
>> Another reason to be cautious about the potential of APC to achieve
>> cost and pricing stability is that whether this will happen or
>> whether we will see a continuation of the decades-old inelastic
>> market for scholarly publishing in an open access market remains to
>> be seen. Will authors see the cost and seek cost-effective
>> publishing solutions? Or, will the underlying dynamic behind the
>> inelastic market - "must purchase / subscribe" simply shift to
>> "must-publish-in"?
>>
>> To date, based on our longitudinal APC study, while there is not
>> enough data to draw firm conclusions, there is enough evidence of
>> transitioning the inelastic market into APCs to warrant concern. As
>> we have reported in the past few years, price increases that are far
>> beyond inflationary levels, applied to already substantial prices,
>> have been observed among both traditional-transitioning and new
>> OA-only publishers.
>>
>> Select examples:
>>
>> SpringerOpen 2018/2019: 8% increase in average APC; 36% of
>> journals, the ones with the highest volumes, increased in price at
>> rates from double the inflation rate to double the price.
>>
>>
> https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/08/13/springeropen-pricing-trends-2018-2019/
>>
>>
>> Frontiers 2018/2019: while the average APC increase is only 3%, 40%
>> of Frontiers journals increased in price from 2018/2019 by 18% - 31%
>> (the EU inflation rate is below 2% for this time frame).
>>
>>
> https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/04/30/frontiers-in-2019-3-increase-in-average-apc/
>>
>>
>> MDPI 2018/2019: "In brief: MDPI has increased prices, in many cases
>> quite substantially (some prices have more than tripled). Even more
>> price increases are anticipated in July 2019, which will have the
>> effect of doubling the average APC and tripling the most common APC.
>> Unlike other publishers' practices, there are no price decreases".
>>
> https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/02/13/mdpi-2019-price-increases-some-hefty-and-more-coming-in-july/
>> [5]
>>
>> Kudos to Dr. Franck Vasquez, MDPI's CEO, for open discussion about
>> similar price increases in 2018. The key takeaway I was hoping for
>> in the case of new APC based publishers like MDPI is an
>> understanding that this kind of price increases (market-based
>> pricing) is not compatible with budgets of payers (libraries,
>> universities and funding agencies' budgets are based on costs and
>> resource availability). This fundamental conflict seems very likely
>> to drive an inelastic, unsustainable APC market. However, after this
>> open, transparent conversation, here we are again in 2019 with new
>> OA publishers pursuing exactly the same pricing strategy.
>>
>> To conclude, while my team spends a lot of time studying APC
>> trends, this does not imply endorsement of the method. In the past,
>> I advocated for APCs as a way to introduce transparency and
>> competition into the market. Today, I urge caution and strongly
>> encourage consideration of other models. For example, direct subsidy
>> models such as providing infrastructure for publishing and archives
>> at the university or research organization and supporting editorial
>> work (e.g. modest subsidy to pay for support staff) is much more
>> efficient than APC, which is in effect an indirect subsidy model. If
>> transparency is sought, universities and funding agencies, at least
>> in my part of the world, have a solid reputation for seeking
>> accountability for every cost incurred.
>>
>> best,
>>
>> Dr. Heather Morrison
>>
>> Associate Professor, School of Information Studies, University of
>> Ottawa
>>
>> Professeur Agrégé, École des Sciences de l'Information,
>> Université d'Ottawa
>>
>> Principal Investigator, Sustaining the Knowledge Commons, a SSHRC
>> Insight Project
>>
>> sustainingknowledgecommons.org [4]
>>
>> Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca<mailto:Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca>
>>
>> https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/?lang=en#/members/706 [6]
>>
>> [On research sabbatical July 1, 2019 - June 30, 2020]
>>
>> -------------------------
>>
>> From: goal-bounces at eprints.org<mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org> <goal-bounces at eprints.org<mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org>> on behalf
>> of Pieper, Dirk <dirk.pieper at uni-bielefeld.de<mailto:dirk.pieper at uni-bielefeld.de>>
>> Sent: Monday, September 2, 2019 4:00 AM
>> To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <goal at eprints.org<mailto:goal at eprints.org>>
>> Subject: Re: [GOAL] How to manage APC waivers and discounts
>>
>> Attention : courriel externe | external email
>>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> (a)    even in "richer" countries it is necessary to reduce APC
>> prices because of limited budgets of academic institutions and
>> funder policies. In many cases authors and libraries are successful
>> to get reduced APCs from publishers
>>
>> (b)   I agree that APCs are in most cases not related to the costs
>> of producing an article, but they indicate the costs for
>> institutions or authors to publish OA in journals with certain
>> publishers. That is a progress compared to the subscription system,
>> because this is slowly leading to more price and cost sensibility.
>> That is why I like APCs J) ...
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Dirk
>>
>> Von: goal-bounces at eprints.org<mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org> [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] Im
>> Auftrag von Peter Murray-Rust
>> Gesendet: Samstag, 31. August 2019 17:18
>> An: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <goal at eprints.org<mailto:goal at eprints.org>>
>> Cc: WAME-L at list.nih.gov<mailto:WAME-L at list.nih.gov>; RADICALOPENACCESS at jiscmail.ac.uk<mailto:RADICALOPENACCESS at jiscmail.ac.uk>; scholcomm
>> <scholcomm at lists.ala.org<mailto:scholcomm at lists.ala.org>>
>> Betreff: Re: [GOAL] How to manage APC waivers and discounts
>>
>> Thank you Chris,
>>
>> I feel exactly as you do, maybe more. This is wrong on several
>> counts.
>>
>> (a) as you say it requires the underprivileged (the "scholarly
>> poor") to beg. Some journals give lower prices for World Bank LMIC
>> countries - but often Brasil and India are classified as
>> high-income. Even reducing the price to half is impossible for many
>> countries.
>>
>> (b) the APC is NOT cost-related (see another post form me about
>> DEAL). DEAL pays Springer the price of an article (2750 E) whereas
>> the cost of processing is ca 400 E (Grossman and Brembs, 2019)
>>
>> Costs are almost never transparent, therefore cause prices to be
>> whatever the publisher can get away with. This adds another layer of
>> injustice.
>>
>> I am affected by the APCs. I am on the board of two journals and
>> being retired have to pay and APC myself. I feel diminished if I
>> have to ask to get a waiver, and in any case it looks very unethical
>> to gve waivers to the board. I therefore cannot publish in the
>> journals that I give my time freely to.
>>
>> The system is now completely out of date. Many places and
>> organizations CAN run platinum journals (no fee open to all). It's
>> more ethical equitable and makes knowledge fully available.
>>
>> 70% of climate papers are behind paywalls. Making a no-fee publish
>> system is the only way to get the knowledge flowing. My software can
>> read 10000 papers in a morning, but the broken societal system
>> prevents that.
>>
>> P.
>>
>> On Sat, Aug 31, 2019 at 2:17 PM Chris Zielinski
>> <chris at chriszielinski.com<mailto:chris at chriszielinski.com>> wrote:
>>
>> (Apologies for cross-posting)
>>
>> This is to raise a question about how editors of Open Access
>> journals that demand an article processing charge (APC) should deal
>> with discounts for non-institutional authors or those from poorer
>> countries.
>>
>> The offering of substantial APC waivers to authors from specific
>> countries or to researchers with financial constraints in specific
>> cases is familiar. My question relates to the way in which such
>> discounts are offered.
>>
>> Usually, a researcher needs to assert or demonstrate his/her
>> inability to pay the APC before getting relief. The problem is that
>> obliging researcher to request a lower or zero APC feels a bit like
>> inviting them to beg - and the result often seems to depend on the
>> benevolence and good humour of the editor, responding on an
>> individual, case-by-case basis, rather than by applying some
>> pre-established rule.
>>
>> This is surely not good enough. It can't be correct and ethical
>> scientific practice to require unsupported authors to face the
>> embarrassment of having to turn out their pockets and demonstrate
>> the holes in their socks before they get a discount.
>>
>> Any views on this? Should there be a norm among OA journals that
>> each should adopt a standardized system to determine APC charges
>> (ranging from 0 to the full APC, depending on an explicit list of
>> circumstances), avoiding the need for any negotiation?
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Chris
>>
>> Chris Zielinski
>> chris at chriszielinski.com<mailto:chris at chriszielinski.com>
>> Blogs: http://ziggytheblue.wordpress.com and
>> http://ziggytheblue.tumblr.com
>> Research publications: http://www.researchgate.net
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>> --
>>
>> "I always retain copyright in my papers, and nothing in any
>> contract I sign with any publisher will override that fact. You
>> should do the same".
>>
>> Peter Murray-Rust
>> Reader Emeritus in Molecular Informatics
>> Unilever Centre, Dept. Of Chemistry
>> University of Cambridge
>> CB2 1EW, UK
>> +44-1223-763069 _______________________________________________
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