Re: Payment at input and introducing competition (was: PLoS pricing...)

[Ann Okerson <aokerson@pantheon.yale.edu>]

>From Peter Banks.

Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 08:18:36 -0400
From: Peter Banks <PBanks@diabetes.org>
To: jan@biomedcentral.com, ssp@lists.sspnet.org, liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: Payment at input and introducing competition (was: PLoS 
pricing.. .)

Jan, perhaps it's time that you started reading something other than the
tracts of the open access movement. You seem to have as accurate a view of
traditional publishing as George F. Will does about liberals. In
particular, I believe you generalize from the experience of a few
high-priced for-profit journals, and assume that is the experience of the
thousands of association and society journals who struggle everyday to
deliver the best information at the fairest possible cost.

I only wish I could relax in the knowledge that I could "recoup thousands
of dollars per article from Academe." This certainly isn't the experience
of any association circulation director I know.

As for the idea that publishers would go so far as to increase point size
and kerning to boost pages and prices, I'll send you copies of Diabetes
from today and 10 years ago. Today's theme: Reading glasses.

You ask a lot of excellent questions--NONE of which have been answered
yet, except perhaps in the minds of some of the rather messianic thinkers
behind the open access movement.

<<< jan@biomedcentral.com  8/14  7:55a >>>
Dean Anderson raises some interesting points. 

First, the drawback that he sees in "a model that relies on authors to
cover publishing costs is that publishers will have a strong incentive to
keep pushing up fees". Journals -- traditional subscription-based journals
and open access journals alike -- compete for authors and their papers.

[SNIP]

Coming back to incentives to push up fees, wouldn't it be so that if the
competition is indeed for authors, and the choice of where to submit for
publication is the authors', payment on behalf of authors is a strong
*disincentive* to keep pushing up fees? Wouldn't input-related charges
restore transparency and a relationship between price and quantity?
Wouldn't, even if it were to result in the same total cost to Academe in
the aggregate, open access be preferable to access restricted to those who
pay? I know, in an input-paid system authors without funding, for instance
those from developing countries, would still be disadvantaged. But it is
an awful lot easier to remedy that by waivers, subsidies, differential
pricing, than to prevent, by legal and technical means, any 'seepage' or
'leakage' of cheap subscriptions to developing countries back into richer
countries which is necessary in a subscription and licence environment.

The other point Anderson makes is that "The end result is that control
over what is published will shift from the consumers of information, who
ultimately decide what will be published through their subscription
dollars, to the sponsors of research".

If only. Would there be a serials crisis if this were the case? Doesn't he
imply that the consumers of information should decide what research is
being done? Research being done is, on the whole, published. The sponsors
insist on that. The 'publish-or-perish' imperative.

It is the lack of any kind of meaningful economic competition in the
traditional publishing arena that is the problem. Competition between
publishers seems to be on the level of 'dare I increase my subscription
prices more than you do', and then using the lucrative proceeds to buy out
other publishers. Let me be clear, there is nothing wrong with profit and
commerce. But let's call a spade a spade, why accept having to pay a
premium for unchecked monopoly and excessive profit if it doesn't even
deliver the goods desired?

Jan Velterop

> -----Original Message-----
> From: D Anderson [mailto:danderson@corhealth.com]
> Sent: 13 August 2003 22:46
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Subject: RE: PLoS pricing and the perceived ability of research grants
> to cover publication costs
> 
> Good points. Another potential drawback of a model that relies on authors
> to cover publishing costs is that publishers will have a strong incentive
> to keep pushing up fees, since author-generated fees will be their primary
> source of funds to cover costs. One potential scenario is a model in which
> authors, or their institutions, bid up fees by trying to ensure
> publication through ever-higher payments to publishers. A journal at risk
> of going under might succumb to the temptation to accept, or expedite, a
> marginal article if the sponsor was willing to pay an exorbitant fee.
> 
> Also, this model obviously would favor research sponsored by 
> well-funded commercial companies.
> 
> The end result is that control over what is published will shift from the
> consumers of information, who ultimately decide what will be published
> through their subscription dollars, to the sponsors of research.
> 
> Dean H. Anderson
> 
> COR Health
> Insight ... not just news
> http://www.corhealth.com