RE: Open Access pricing and the perceived ability of research grants to cover publication costs

[Jan Velterop <jan@biomedcentral.com>]

Dear Richard,

Do I gather that you are not against the idea of open access for research
papers but that your reserve boils down to the issue of funding an
input-paid model of publishing (article charges) as opposed to the
traditional output-paid one (subscriptions)?

Any transition comes with these kind of difficulties. The question to
focus on is the desired outcome. Grants and other funding methods are not
yet fully adapted to what is still a very new development. Before halfway
the 19th century, receipients of any mail were expected to pay for the
postage upon delivery. The introduction of the postage stamp (in 1847 in
the US) changed that, although it took until 1855 before pre-payment was
compulsory in the US. Even then, post had to be picked up from the post
office and it took quite a while before free delivery -- first in cities,
much later in rural areas -- became widespread. Would we ever
realistically want to go back to 'recipient pays'? (Although for junk mail
it might be the solution :-).

Why this story? Because it has analogies with the changes underway in the
dissemination of scientific research results.

Hitherto -- and still the prevailing model -- the recipient paid/pays for
the delivery of scientific papers (mostly via subscriptions or access
licences). It was/is not the funding bodies but in virtually all cases the
institutional library who paid/pays the cost. At a rate, in the aggregate,
of considerably more than $1500 per article. Many institutions and their
libraries are keen on open access publishing, despite the hurdles that may
still exist. They are determined to overcome them. BioMed Central
experiences a lot of support from institutions picking up the tab. The
money does not have to come from funding bodies only, although they might
have a strong incentive to support open access and with it increase their
visibility and the impact of the research funded (just an example: malaria
research published with open access is reaching parts that other
publications don't reach -- especially the countries where malaria is
endemic. The likelihood that such research was intended by the funding
bodies sponsoring it to reach those countries is high, one can safely
presume). Quite a few funding bodies already encourage authors to publish
with open access. They are the only ones, too, who could introduce a
measure of compulsion, by paying the charges and making open access a
condition of funding research projects.

But hopefully, compulsion and things like copyright exemption, will be
eclipsed by conviction, as the benefits of open access become increasingly
obvious.

The suggestion I would have for the AIBS (I don't mean this as patronising
as it may sound) is to give authors and their funding bodies a choice,
something like the American Physiological Society is doing
(physiolgenomics.org). Just determine the level of charges needed to cover
the real costs per article (if more than $1500 you may wish to look at
your working practices and procedures; even most commercial publishers
have per-article costs for online versions that do not surpass this
amount), and give them an opportunity to 'procure' maximum free online
dissemination for their articles. That would potentially enable a
relatively seamless and painless transition, no?

Best wishes,

Jan Velterop 
 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard O'Grady, Exec. Director, AIBS, 202-628-1500 x 258
> [mailto:rogrady@aibs.org]
> Sent: 12 August 2003 22:33
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Subject: PLoS pricing and the perceived ability of research grants to
> cover publication costs
> 
> 
> As the publisher of a non-profit biology journal, I offer the following
> counter-argument to Jan Velterop's 8/7 posting about PLoS pricing
> (repeated at the bottom of this email):
> 
> Regardless of research funding levels in the biomedical sciences, and
> regardless of the argument that publication in the peer-reviewed
> literature is the final step of doing research in any area of science and
> should therefore be paid for by the scientist's funding sources, it is the
> case that individual grant awards in non-medical areas of biology and in
> many other areas of the sciences typically include very little, if any,
> money for publication costs that would be sufficient to support an
> "author-pay"  system.  Funding the cost of publication through submission
> or publication fees is not likely to be possible unless the likes of the
> National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S.
> Environmental Protection Agency, and similar agencies change their
> policies re allowable costs in their grants as well as either convince
> Congress to increase their budgets dramatically.
> 
> * For example, few National Science Foundation grants in biology provide
> more than $1,000/yr to support publication expenses.  So a biologist with
> good NSF funding, generating six research articles a year, does not have
> $10,000 to $20,000/yr in his/her grant to pay the cost of publishing
> his/her research at anything near the price levels that PLoS or Velterop
> are suggesting.
> 
> * Furthermore, the PLoS approach would disenfranchise and prevent from
> publishing those scientists who are working on projects that are not
> externally funded, are funded through sources that preclude paying
> publication charges, or are funded at a low level.  For example:
> 
> * Faculty members doing research with college or foundation grants that do
> not support publication charges.
> 
> * Scientists working for government agencies, NGOs, institutes, or
> industry that do not provide their employees with funds for publication
> costs.
> 
> * Faculty members at non-tier 1 universities, or small colleges, doing
> research with college or foundation grants that do not support publication
> charges.
> 
> * Researchers' unanticipated findings and resultant papers that arise
> during the course of a grant but aren't budgeted for.
> 
> * Junior faculty members publishing so as to be in position 
> to apply for their first grant.
> 
> * Postdoctoral fellows publishing so as to be in position to 
> apply for a job or funding.
> 
> * Graduate students, and even undergraduate students, doing a degree on a
> show-string and have generated research results worthy of publication.
> 
> Research produced by the kinds of scientists listed above is regularly
> published, for example, as part of the content of AIBS's monthly
> peer-reviewed journal, BioScience, as well as in most other BioOne
> journals (note that the median print subscription price of the 60+
> journals in this collection is approx. $160/yr/ea, and this price is
> closely tied to recovering the journal's editing, production, and overhead
> costs, about 75% of which remain even if a single paper copy is never
> printed).  Such research--funded by the public and now ready for
> dissemination--would be excluded from ever reaching the public under any
> model that is based upon having the author pay for the cost of publication
> (I disagree that $1,500/article is anywhere near sufficient to cover such
> costs, but that's for another email).  As a consequence, the research
> would not get published and the journal would not have a pool of authors
> able to pay the prices--year in, year out, consistently--that it needs to
> keep its operations staffed, housed, and equiped.  The journal would
> either cease to exist and its contents lost and/or scattered, or, more
> likely, the journal would be sold to a commercial publisher by its society
> before it collapsed entirely so that the society could at least retain
> editorial control of the journal's content while giving up 
> ownership of the journal's publication operations and pricing.
> 
> The PLoS model is inconsistent with how most scientific 
> research is funded and gets published. Covering publication costs 
> through paid subscriptions appears to be the best way not only to allow 
> journals from non-profit publishers to recover their costs of editing, 
> production, and overhead, but also to avoid discriminating against and 
> excluding most of the very scientists whose collective work constitutes 
> the scientific literature.
> 
> Richard T. O'Grady, Ph.D. Executive Director, American Institute of
> Biological Sciences Publisher, BioScience 1444 Eye St. NW, Suite 200
> Washington, DC 20005
> 
> V 202-628-1500 x 258
> F 202-628-1509
> rogrady@aibs.org
> www.aibs.org