OPEN ACCESS: a progress report

Hot Topic

CAUL Hobart

Definition• Availability of information on the public internet

without any price barriers to access

• Compatible with copyright, peer review, profit

• See BOAI for fuller definition• http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm

2004 Developments • OECD Declaration (Jan)

• IFLA Statement (Feb)

• Washington D.C. Principles (Mar)*

• ALPSP Principles (Mar)*

• Go8 Statement (May)

• Elsevier policy change (June)*

• DOAJ article level searching (June)

Recent Developments 2• EU Enquiry launched (June)

• U.S. Congress C’tee proposal re NIH-funded research (July)

• U.K. Commons Enquiry Report (July)

• OUP announces OA for Nucleic Acids Research (July)

• Springer announces Open Choice (July)*

• Alliance for Taxpayer Access (U.S.) (Aug)• http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/timeline.htm

Business models: ‘author pays’• Costs met by charging for publication of

accepted articles

• Charge may be paid by author/s or by funding body

• Non-article content may require sub

• Commercial and non-commercial examples – PLoS, BMC, OUP

‘Author pays’: PLoS• Non-profit cooperative organisation

• Set-up grant of US$9m from Moore Found

• Income from sponsorships, memberships

• New, high-profile titles the aim: PLoS Biology, PLoS Medicine

• Authors charged US$1500

• Archiving allowed – incl in PubMed Central

‘Author pays’: BioMed Central• Commercial company yet to make profit

• 131 OA journals – 5 require sub for non-article content

• 29 subscription journals (Reviews of..)

• Author charges vary – US$525 to US$1500

• Institutional memberships waive fees

Business models: Prosser modelAuthors have option to choose OA and pay for it.

Subscription levels take account of uptake of OA (?).

Advantages: minimises publisher risk, rewards OA-aware authors, meets possible funding requirements.

Disadvantages: Subs still necessary, relies on author appreciation of OA

Prosser examples• Proceedings of the National Academy of

Science – author charged US$1000, can archive

• Springer journals – author charged US$3000 – must transfer copyright, limited archiving

• Company of Biologists – author charged US$2160 – can archive on personal website

Business models: fully subsidised• Usually published by a society, organisation or

university

• May have subscription model for print version

• Good track record eg New Horizons in Adult Education 1987-, Psycholoquy 1990- Bryn Marr Classical Review 1990-, Postmodern Culture 1990-, First Monday 1996- and many more

• But not high profile, on the whole

Contending influences• Desire/need for visibility – serves authors,

readers – met through OA

• Need for prestige – met through established journals – serves publishers

• Viability of OA business models – innovative publishers may be rewarded

• New clarity of intent of funding bodies

Repositories: institutional or disciplinary (central)?

A spurious, unnecessary and divisive debate

Conclusion 1• OA publishing has had little effect on journal

pricing so far, and is unlikely to do so for some time

• Traditional pattern of journal publishing will persist, perhaps for decades. It will be assisted by the success of OA journals

• If OA journals fail, less structured models based on repositories will be encouraged

Conclusion 2• Success for OA won’t eliminate all our costs

(and it’s a long way off)

• Repositories cost

• Added value/secondary services will cost (commercial, learned societies)

• But things are looking up!