Re: 2006 BioOne Progress Report Now Available

[Susan Skomal <susan@arl.org>]

Joe:

Thank you very much for responding to our 2006 Progress Report
and for raising these timely questions - issues that BioOne is
indeed working actively to resolve. A significant part of
BioOne's operating philosophy is to be as transparent as possible
about our experience, including frank statements of lessons
learned and adjustments we must make as the scholarly publishing
environment evolves. We thus welcome your questions and hope that
discussion of our experience will be beneficial to the enterprise
of non-profit scholarly publishing more broadly.

For those unfamiliar with BioOne's business model, by contractual
agreement we return 50% of all subscription revenue earned to our
participating publishers. We are pleased to report, however, that
for each of the past three years BioOne has returned an
increasingly greater percentage. In fact, 61% of the total sales
revenue was distributed to publishers for 2005, and we are hoping
to top that from 2006 earnings.

Because BioOne does not have detailed information about the
operating expenses of its publishers, I'm not able to answer
directly the questions you've posed. We are, however, now in the
process - with the cooperation of our publishers - of completing
a thorough analysis on an completely confidential basis of the
subscription and financial trajectories of our titles in the five
years prior to joining BioOne as compared with the years they've
participated in the collection. Our goal is to determine what
cohort of titles is best served by participation, and the pricing
levels that are needed to provide sustainable revenues on a
primary (rather than incremental) basis. This is a continuation
and extension of the work begun in 2004, referenced in the
Progress Report (pp.1-2), which represented a fundamental shift
in BioOne's original business model.

Over its six-year evolution, we have learned that BioOne may not
be a good fit for all non-profit journals in our field. For a
great many titles in organismal and integrative biology, BioOne=92s
model now generates sufficient revenue to offset the loss of
income from subscription sales to single institutions, whether
print or online. I submit, moreover, that the issue is no longer
print versus electronic, but what might be termed traditional
single-title subscriptions versus aggregated sales. Pricing
adjustments made following the 2004 study were helpful in this
respect - and it is important to note that these increases were
understood and supported by the library community, as is
indicated by our continued renewal rate of ca. 99%. We are
extremely grateful for this support.

For titles with very large and stable traditional subscription
sales, however, BioOne may not be an appropriate choice. We now
routinely generate multi-year revenue projections for titles
interested in joining BioOne to help them evaluate the financial
effects of so doing, and we discuss frankly with prospective
publishers the issues they should consider before making a
decision.

BioOne's mission is to create an alternative publishing model
that is sustainable for non-profit publishers and libraries
alike, both of which are facing significant and related
challenges. This involves balancing the needs of both. We are not
in the business of asking scholarly societies to subsidize
BioOne; neither do we expect libraries to subsidize
revenue-maximizing publishing strategies. Rather, we work with
congenial non-profit publishers and academic libraries to develop
a sustainable, scalable, and (we hope) replicable publishing
model.

With respect to Open Access, BioOne does not derive revenue from
its OA publications and does not return royalties. As part of our
mission to promote the scholarly enterprise, we are eager to
expand the number of OA titles we publish, and are now working to
reduce costs to encourage more OA titles to join BioOne - again,
titles for whom an OA model makes sense. But we are also acutely
aware that a broader solution to the economics of Open Access
publishing is much needed if OA is to become a sustainable
compliment to scholarly publishing supported by subscription
sales. To this end, BioOne has likewise begun to investigate
creative models.

BioOne would be honored if you and other similarly active and
concerned members of the scholarly publishing community would
attend its upcoming Publishers and Partners Meeting, April 11, in
the DC area. This event is an opportunity to explore the common
goals of our libraries and society/non-profit publishers, with a
view to helping map the longer-term plan you reference. For
information, please see
http://www.bioone.org/perlserv/?request=3Dget-static&name=3Dget-news#meetin=
g.

Susan Skomal, Ph.D.

Executive Director
BioOne
21 Dupont Circle
Washington, DC 20036
Tel: 202-296-2296
Cell: 301-613-8736
Fax: 202-872-0884
susan@arl.org


On Feb 9, 2007, at 5:59 PM, Joseph J. Esposito wrote:

> I was delighted to hear about BioOne's "commitment to evolve to
> better meet the needs of its stake-holders," but I would be
> interested to learn as well about the fortunes of one subgroup
> of stakeholders, the shareholders, which, in BioOne's case, are
> principally professional societies.
>
> What portion of their operating expenses are offset by the
> income from BioOne?  How does this compare to, say, three years
> ago and how is it forecast to evolve three years from now?  If
> there are print as well as online editions, what is the
> expected future (and profitability) of the print editions?
>
> If in time a publication evolved such that its only edition
> were electronic, available exclusively through BioOne, would
> the revenue from BioOne be sufficient to offset the
> publication's expenses?  If not, is the professional society
> prepared to subsidize the BioOne edition indefinitely?  If the
> expectation is to derive revenue through an Open Access model
> (as some participating publishers apparently do now), how is
> that revenue forecast to increase and at what time will it
> exceed the operating costs of any particular publication?
>
> In other words, what is the longer-term plan?
>
> Joe Esposito
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Lauren Kane" 
> To: 
> Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2007 4:56 PM
> Subject: 2006 BioOne Progress Report Now Available
>
>> 2006 BioOne Progress Report Now Available
>> Washington, DC (February 8, 2007)
>>
>> At an average cost to subscribing institutions of $0.75 per
>> full- text download, BioOne remains one of the highest
>> quality, lowest cost options for electronic access to current
>> content. A complete report detailing BioOne's evolution last
>> year is now available in the 2006 BioOne Progress Report at
>> http://www.bioone.org/pdf/ BioOne06ProgressRpt.pdf. This
>> publicly available report illustrates BioOne's increasing
>> relevance and value to the scholarly community as an
>> alternative, not-for-profit online publisher.  In addition to
>> describing past and present activities and achievements, the
>> report highlights BioOne's continued commitment to evolve to
>> better meet the needs of its stake-holders.
>>
>> BioOne is now home to 125 publications from 91 publishers
>> across three collections: BioOne.1, BioOne.2, and Open Access.
>> Paid subscribers at the end of 2006 included nearly 1,000
>> global institutions and organizations, plus many hundreds more
>> accessing through no or low cost developing world programs.
>> BioOne registered over 5.9 million hits in 2006 to abstracts
>> and full- texts, with at least 258,000 unique visitors to the
>> site each month.
>>
>> ###