Re: Major society publisher announces support for public access to scientific literature

[Peter Banks <pbanks@bankspub.com>]

Although I think many journals can probably make content 
available earlier than they do without much risk to their 
business models, you can't take the experience of the ASCB 
journal and make that the case for FRPAA.

How big an impact FRPAA may depends on at least four factors:

1) The percent of manuscripts that are NIH funded; the higher the 
percentage, the higher the potential risk. For some large medical 
journals, this can be less than 20%, since a good deal of 
research is funded by industry. For smaller basic science 
journals it can be 50% or above.

2) The percent of subscriptions that are from libraries and 
institutions. Institutional subscriptions may be more threatened 
than individual subscriptions, as individuals are probably less 
likely to cancel their (often low cost) subscriptions. The 
arguments for OA often seem to assume that all subscriptions are 
institutional. This is not the case for many society journals, 
where member and nonmember subscriptions often constitute the 
overwhelming majority of subscriptions; a subscription may often 
be bundled with membership.

3) The amount of other sources of revenue. A journal with large 
income from advertising and reprints can weather a decline in 
subscription income better than one solely dependent on 
subscriptions.

4) The prestige of the journal. Obviously, a high-prestige and 
frequently cited journal is in less danger of being cancelled 
than one that it not.

5) Frequency. Monthlies are better protected against cancellation 
than quarterlies, since more of the monthly's content remains 
protected by subscription access control.

>From these criteria, I don't know what conclusions you can draw 
from the experience of Molecular Biology of the Cell--other than 
for very similar journals. MBC is obviously high prestige and 
essential, and therefore less likely to be cancelled. It is a 
monthly.

It also comes as an automatic benefit of membership in ASCB. If 
there is an allocation of membership dues to the journal, than it 
has an automatic cushion that another publisher might not.

>From PubMed, it looks as though about one-third of articles in 
MBC are PHS funded. In 2005, for example, 203 out of 601 
manuscripts were PHS funded. That's not a high level of exposure.

Overall, MBC seems fairly well buffered against the effects of 
FRPAA. I do not think it is proper for ASCB to present it as an 
example of what might or might not happen for all journals were 
FRPAA to be enacted.

Peter Banks
Banks Publishing
Publications Consulting and Services
Fairfax, VA 22030
pbanks@bankspub.com
www.bankspub.com
www.associationpublisher.com/blog/


On 2/7/07 6:34 PM, "Jennifer McLennan" <jennifer@arl.org> wrote:

> [N.B. from the Moderator:  A large number of society (and 
> other?) publishers, for example, very visibly the HighWire 
> Press group, make their journal content freely available a few 
> months after publication and have been doing so for several 
> years, since well before talk of mandated free access. How does 
> ASCB's providing delayed free access argue in some particular 
> way for the FRPAA bill when other societies providing this kind 
> of access don't make that same argument?  Perhaps someone from 
> ASCB could respond and clarify further?  Thank you]
>
> ***
>
> Alliance for Taxpayer Access
> www.taxpayeraccess.org
>
> Media Advisory
> For Immediate Release
> February 6, 2007
>
> Contacts:
> Jennifer McLennan
> Director of Communications,
> SPARC
> jennifer@arl.org
> (202) 296-2296 ext. 121
>
> Kevin Wilson
> Public Policy Director,
> ASCB
> kwilson@ascb.org
> (301) 347-9300
>
> Major society publisher announces support for public access to
> scientific literature
>
> Washington, DC (Feb. 6, 2007)
>
> The American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB), a non-profit
> scientific society of over 11,000 members and publisher of the
> high-impact monthly journal, Molecular Biology of the Cell, has
> announced its "Position on Public Access to Scientific
> Literature," calling for free public access to federally funded
> research within six months of publication. ASCB has provided free
> access (after a two-month embargo) to research published in its
> journals since 2001 and has experienced no adverse impact on its
> finances.
>
> The ASCB statement, which was announced in a January 31, 2007
> press release, reads:
>
> ASCB Position on Public Access to Scientific Literature
>
> The ASCB believes strongly that barriers to scientific
> communication slow scientific progress. The more widely
> scientific results are disseminated, the more readily they can be
> understood, applied, and built upon. The sooner findings are
> shared, the faster they will lead to new scientific insights and
> breakthroughs. This conviction has motivated the ASCB to provide
> free access to all of the research articles in Molecular Biology
> of the Cell two months after publication, which it has done since
> 2001. The articles are available both on the journal's website
> and in the National Library of Medicine's online archive, PubMed
> Central.
>
> The vast majority of the biomedical research conducted at
> American universities and colleges is funded by taxpayers. The
> ASCB believes that taxpayers are best served when all scientists,
> educators, physicians, and members of the public - including
> patients and their families - have access to publicly funded
> research results. So long as significant access barriers remain,
> taxpayers are not fully benefiting from the work that they fund.
> With the proliferation of networked technology, we have an
> unprecedented and cost-effective means to overcome such barriers.
> For the first time, it is possible and practical to offer free
> access to every potential user. It is incumbent upon us, as
> scientists and citizens, to take full advantage of this
> opportunity.
>
> Some publishers argue that providing free access to their
> journal's content will catastrophically erode their revenue base.
> The experience of many successful research journals demonstrates
> otherwise; these journals make their online content freely
> available after a short embargo period that protects subscription
> revenue. For example, as noted above, the content of Molecular
> Biology of the Cell is free to all after only two months, yet the
> journal remains not only financially sound, but profitable. The
> data clearly show that free access and profitability are not
> mutually exclusive.
>
> Our goal should be to make research articles freely available as
> soon as feasible so that science and the public benefit from
> their expanded use and application. At the same time, it is
> important that nonprofit societies and other publishers generate
> sufficient revenues to sustain the costs of reviewing and
> publishing articles. We believe that a six-month embargo period
> represents a reasonable compromise between the financial
> requirements of supporting a journal and the need for access to
> current research.
>
> For these reasons, the ASCB supports efforts to require that the
> results of federally funded biomedical research be made freely
> available to the public, no more than six months after they are
> published.
>
> [statement ends]
>
> The statement, which is available online at
> http://ascb.org/index.cfm?navid=10&id=1968&tcode=nws3, bolsters
> the case for a mandatory National Institutes of Health public
> access policy and for passage of The Federal Research Public
> Access Act, a measure that would require federal agencies that
> fund over $100 million in annual external research to make
> manuscripts of peer-reviewed journal articles stemming from that
> research publicly available via the Internet within six months of
> publication. The bill was introduced last year by Senator John
> Cornyn (R-TX) and Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and awaiting
> reintroduction in the 110th Congress (For further information
> about the legislation, see http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/frpaa/).
>
> ###

[SNIP]