<div dir="ltr">Jan:<div style>I agree with you that pricing journals for a publisher is complicated, at least when looking from the inside out. But that is no different from any other supplier of a product. The problem with the academic journal market is price transparency.</div>
<div style><br></div><div style>With Hybrid Gold OA publishers essentially tell us to trust them to do the right thing. The problem is that the market is already so distorted because of other business practices that there is no way for buyers to check they are doing the right thing.</div>
<div style><br></div><div style>Hybrid Gold OA is just one other part of market-distorting practices, which include:</div><div style><br></div><div style>1. Site licenses</div><div style> a) They force a university to make uniform decisions for a large and diverse group, rather than let individuals decide what exactly they need, which would be a far more realistic indicator of usefulness of a journal than impact factor or surveys. It forces universities to buy more than they need.</div>
<div style> b) Publishers try to hide the costs of journals through nondisclosure clauses in contracts, thereby reducing transparency. It is impossible for universities to evaluate how good a negotiator their library is, as there is no way to compare the results with other universities and libraries.</div>
<div style><br></div><div style>2. Bundling</div><div style> a) Publishers use the market power of one journal to force universities to subsidize new and marginal journals.</div><div style> b) Forces universities to subscribe to more than they need, exacerbating 1.a)</div>
<div style> c) It decreases price transparency, exacerbating 1.b)</div><div style><br></div><div style>3. Consortial deals</div><div style> a) Again, this is a strategy to make universities buy more than they need, exacerbating 1.a)</div>
<div style> b) Decrease price transparency, exacerbating 1.b)</div><div style><br></div><div style>All of these practices make it impossible to assess prices. Their complexity increases the total cost at the publisher's end. It increases the administrative cost at the university's end. And, this market cannot operate without a plethora of middlemen, each of which add administrative overhead and profit margins.</div>
<div style><br></div><div style>I have no doubt there are many people among publishers who work hard and try to do right. But, there is no way of knowing. In this context, Hybrid Gold is impossible to support.</div><div style>
<br></div><div style>--Eric.</div><div style><br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br clear="all"><div><div dir="ltr"><br><div><a href="http://scitechsociety.blogspot.com" target="_blank">http://scitechsociety.blogspot.com</a></div>
<div>Twitter: @evdvelde<br></div><div><br><div>Telephone: (626) 376-5415<br></div><div>E-mail: <a href="mailto:eric.f.vandevelde@gmail.com" target="_blank">eric.f.vandevelde@gmail.com</a></div></div></div></div>
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Jul 2, 2013 at 10:24 AM, Stevan Harnad <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:amsciforum@gmail.com" target="_blank">amsciforum@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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.<div>
<br></div><div>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.</div>
<div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Jul 2, 2013 at 10:38 AM, Jan Velterop <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:velterop@gmail.com" target="_blank">velterop@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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.<br>
<br>
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:<br>
1) how many subscriptions do we expect to be able to sell;<br>
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<br>
3) what margins can we expect to contribute to overheads and profit (or surplus, in the case of a not-for-profit publisher).<br>
<br>
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?<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
In any event, 'double-dipping' is an emotive term the use of which is not conducive to a rational debate.<br>
<span><font color="#888888"><br>
Jan Velterop<br>
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