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Re: Subscription to Open Access Transition (was Open Choice Success Clauses)

Heather: Here is why this cannot work from the point of view of a publisher: for simplicity, suppose you have a journal with 100 library subscriptions, publishing 100 articles, one article from each of the 100 institutions of these libraries, the journal subscription rate is $1000 and the total revenue of the publisher is $100,000 a year. The journal goes hybrid with OA fee of $1000 (total revenue of the journal divided by the number of articles). Say 50% of the authors take the OA option, each paying $1000. The publisher would, one hopes at least, be willing to reduce the subscription rate by 50% for everyone, so the publisher can still have 100 subscribers each paying $500.

If the publisher reduces the subscription rate for the 50 institutes choosing OA by 100% (to offset what they have paid in OA fees), the journal will continue to charge $1000 for those who didn't choose OA. How many of the 50 remaining *paying* subscribers will continue to pay $1000 for the journal with only 50 toll access articles? They were paying $1000 to access 100 articles, $10 per article. Now they are asked to pay $1000 for only 50 article (since their subscription does not really get them anything for the 50 OA articles). The cost per article is now $20. They will not accept this 100% price increase and simply cancel their subscription. (If the publisher think that they will accept, they would have increased the subscription rate to $20 per article before even thinking about the OA hybrid model, or at least most publishers would).

This is a practical objection of course. But even on a more theoretical bases, I don't agree that this is actually fairer. Institutes paying the OA fees in hybrid journals are getting what they are paying for: the whole world accessing their articles with no subscription barriers. It is only fair for them to continue paying for the percentage for the journal that is still toll access, for that payment they will be getting what they are paying for, online access the toll access articles in that journal.

Ahmed Hindawi
http://www.hindawi.com

Heather Morrison wrote:
My original message talked about two topics:  open choice
successclauses, and subscription to open access transition.

One thought in this message is the possibility of a gradualtransition
from subscription to open access, through librarybased payments that are
a combination of subscription payments,and open access processing fee
payments.  For the avoidance ofdoubt, I am specifically talking about
fees to make articles openaccess, not the traditional page charges that
have been paid byacademic departments in the print / subscription
environment.

In order for this to work, the library must be able to deduct theOA
processing fees paid from subscriptions.  This is most likelyto succeed
when the library coordinates payment of OA processingfees. This approach
to transition is most obvious with the "openchoice" publishing option.

This might work really well if publishers decrease subscriptioncosts for
everyone when anyone pays OA processing fees.However, there are a number
of advantages to having the librarieswhich pay the fees receive the
discount.  First, there is muchmore incentive with this approach for
libraries to participate;it is also fairer.  Second, there are a number
of efficiencyadvantages.  For example, there are invoicing efficiencies
forthe publishers, an excellent bargaining point for the libraries.That
is, by doing the work of coordinating the payments,libraries are in a
good position to negotiate a reduced OAprocessing fee rate for their
faculty, in addition to reducedsubscription costs.

Kudos to Jan Velterop and Springer for beginning to discusstransition
from full subscription payments to a combination ofsubscription / open
choice with libraries and consortia.  [Note:this is not an endorsement
of the Springer Open Choice option].

While this process is most obvious with open choice, the samebasic
principles can be used to transition from subscriptions ingeneral to
support for fully open access journals.

Heather Morrison
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com