ARMA 6th JuneCosts and payment of open access

article processing charges

What does Open Access to research mean?

• Universally available via the Internet, without any barriers to access

• Licensed so as to allow redistribution and reuse as long as attribution is given

• Permanently archived in an internationally recognized repository (e.g. PubMed Central)

What’s the problem with the current system?

• The intellectual effort that goes into a research article comes from the research community (authors, peer reviewers, academic editors)

• Why should the published article be under the absolute control of a publisher that plays a limited role at the end of the process?

• Subscription-based access to research is a legacy of print-based economics – it makes no sense in an online environment

Comparison of models

• Under the traditional model, the research community gives up control of the research, and the publisher sells it back

• Under the OA publishing model, the publisher charges directly for the service of publication/ dissemination

Routes towards Open Access• Gold OA

Publishing in an open access journal – Fully OA journals

e.g. BioMed Central, Public Library of Science etc– Optional OA in traditional journals

(now offered by most major publishers)

• Green OA Depositing articles in an OA repositorySubject repositories– PubMed Central– UK PubMed Central– ArXiV

Institutional repositories–DSpace–Eprints–Fedora–Open Repository

OA journals and OA repositories are complementary

• Repositories are vital but are not a complete solution

• Dependence on subscription journals means– Embargo period (to preserve subscriptions)– Version in repository is not the ‘official’ one– Extra work for authors to deposit

• OA journals allow full and immediate access to official version, and deposit on behalf of author

Role of funders in Open Access• More and more funders and have policies

requiring funding recipients to deposit articles in a open access archive

• Wellcome Trust’s lead has been followed by the majority of biomedical UK funders as part of UK PubMed Central

• European funders and research organizations have similar policies

• NIH policy (deposit requested, not required) is under review

UK PubMed Central funders

Role of funders in open access (contd…)

• Wellcome estimates the cost of publication is only around 1% of the cost of doing the research– It is entirely feasible for funders to break the

stalemate caused by overstretched library budgets• Grant office receives 20-50% of grant monies for

indirect costs such as library subscriptions.– Need to take a tiny slice of this for open access

publication payment

BioMed Central’s Journals

• BioMed Central publishes over 170 open access peer-reviewed journals across Biology, Medicine, chemistry and physics.

• Using an alternative business model to maintain our open access policy:

– Article processing charge (APC) per published article

Why have APCs, what do they cover?

• Our journals provide barrier-free open access without subscription charges. Articles are universally and freely accessible via the Internet.

• Open access publishing is not without costs.• APCs cover the following costs:

– Editorial– Development– Production– Customer services / payment administration

What do we charge?

• Varies from journal to journal • Typical BioMed Central

journal charges £750-£900• BioMed Central APC comparison

page lists 21 publishers’ open access options

• BioMed Central’s charges are towards the lower end

http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/authors /apccomparison

Article-processing charges - who pays?

• Authors pay out of their individual grant funds• Authors pay using “central fund for open

access publishing” managed by their institution and supported by funding agencies e.g. Wellcome Trust

• Institutions prepay on behalf of their authors via BioMed Central membership scheme(Institution gets a discount, authors face no obstacle to choosing OA publication)

Prepay membership• Customers make an advanced payment

depending on article inflow• Larger the advanced payment the greater

discount given• When publish “real” APC minus discount is

deducted from account• When advanced payment runs out can “top-

up” or wait until end of year

Supporters membership

• For institutions not going onto prepay model • Pay Flat Fee based on FTE of medical and life

science staff. Starting from £1120• Authors qualify for a 15% discount on APC

www.biomedcentral.com/info/about/membership

Comparing the costs of the traditional model vs open access

• Last year, Oxford University Press shared the results of its experiments with Open Accesshttp://www.oxfordjournals.org/news/oa_workshop.html

• Under the subscription model, OUP’s Nucleic Acids Research was taking $3000-$4000 of subscription revenue per article published

• For comparison, BioMed Central APC charges are mostly in range $1500-$2000

• The research community is paying over the odds because subscription journals do not function as an effective market

I. Cost per article published

II. Cost per article download

• Elsevier makes much of the fact that the cost to the research community per article access has decreased to £2.00

• The analogous figure for BioMed Central’s journals is less than £0.25 per article access

• 8-fold more cost-effective!

The roles of players in the payment of open access

• Funder’s Role: Grant provider. Provide fund to library or institutional administration or directly to authors. Mandate open access of funded research output

• Research Administrator’s Role: Work with librarians and research depts to organise open access publishing central fund paid for as indirect cost from research funders.

• Library’s Role: Work with research administrators to organise open access publishing central fund paid for as indirect cost by research funders.

Thank you for listening!

natasha@biomedcentral.com