<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>On 2012-10-12, at 10:11 AM, ANDREW Theo wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div>1) hybrid journals generally charge more than full OA journals</div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div>independent of journal impact factor, and</div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div> 2) hybrid journals with high impact factors charge significantly</div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div>more than other types of journal for gold open access. </div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div><br>I find this apparent correlation between journal impact factor and</div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div>cost worrying and would welcome feedback. Is this something</div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div>that other people are seeing or have we got our facts wrong?<br></div></blockquote></div><br><div>The outcome is quite predictable, and easily explained:</div><div><br></div><div>1. Hybrid journals are just subscription journals that offer Gold</div><div>OA as an added option, for a price, per article, over and </div><div>above worldwide subscription revenue.</div><div><br></div><div>2. They tend to price the option at about 1/Nthe of their total </div><div>annual subscription revenue for publishing N articles.</div><div><br></div><div>3. That 1/Nth is 1/Nth of the revenue for a product that includes</div><div>a lot of other products and services (e.g. the print edition) that</div><div>are co-bundled with it.</div><div><br></div><div>4. Most Gold-only publishers (such as BMC and PLoS) do not</div><div>have a print edition, nor its expenses. so they charge less.</div><div><br></div><div>5. Most journals are subscription journals.</div><div><br></div><div>6. Virtually all the top journals, with the highest impact factors,</div><div>are subscription journals.</div><div><br></div><div>7. So the correlation between hybrid Gold OA price and </div><div>impact factor is simply because most of the high impact</div><div>Gold OA journals are hybrid Gold rather than Gold-only.</div><div><br></div><div>8. The price of Gold OA will be much lower once Green</div><div>OA has been globally mandated by institutions and funders</div><div>worldwide.</div><div><br></div><div>9. Global Green will force journals to cut obsolete costs</div><div>and products/services and downsize to only the</div><div>post-Green OA essentials, which is <i>just the peer review</i></div><div><i>service.</i></div><div><br></div><div>10. The price of just peer review alone will be even lower once</div><div>it is <i>charged as a <a href="http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/21348/">no-fault service</a></i>, per round of review,</div><div>irrepective of whether the outcome is acceptance, call for</div><div>revision, or rejection. </div><div><br></div><div>(My guess is that post-Green Gold will cost no more than</div><div>$100-$200 per round of review, compared to $1000-$5000+ </div><div>for hybrid Gold OA today. And the no-fault condition will ensure </div><div>that journals referee to maximize quality, not to maximize</div><div>acceptance revenue.)</div><div><br></div><div><b>Moral:</b> It is premature to pay for Gold OA at today's prices,</div><div>especially for hybrid Gold OA.</div><div><br></div><div>Mandate and provide Green OA; and when the price has</div><div>come down and all journals are Gold-only, Gold OA will</div><div>become affordable as just a peer review service, paid for </div><div>out of a fraction of institutions' annual subscription cancellation </div><div>savings).</div><div><br></div><div>Meanwhile the world will have OA (Green) at long last.</div><div><br></div><div>Stevan Harnad</div></body></html>