Re: Springer Open Choice uptake affects 2011 journal pricing

["Bill Hooker" <cwhooker@fastmail.fm>]

Jan,

I'm happy to relinquish "pay twice for nothing" as wide of the mark but
we may have to agree to disagree about double dipping.  I defer here to
Bernd-Christoph Kaemper's careful untangling of the web of obfuscation
woven by the likes of NPG (see, e.g., a recent posting to this list).

You go on to say:

> But here, as everywhere else, it's 'caveat
> emptor'. Ignore the OA articles in a hybrid journals, and judge
> the price purely on the non-OA content. Then compare to other
> journals, or to your own perception of a fair price. If the
> journal fails that test, cancel. Or not, and keep moaning. Who
> knows, one day it might even help.

Well, we are seeing a lot of libraries take you up on that lately.  The
UC scuffle ain't over, VIVA is canceling Blackwell Synergy at the end of
the year... interesting times.

But a larger point is that you are basically saying "love it or leave
it", which is fine if you can leave it.  But hybrid journals retain a
subscription component which makes them economic complements, not
substitutes.  So hybrid or not, I can't choose between J. Rubbish and J.
Garbage, I have to take both if that's my field.


> Your point 1) is fair comment.

But see Watkinson, this thread.  When I can find time I'll try to get
better sources for my numbers, and maybe also write to some publishers
to get a clearer picture.  In light of Watkinson's comments the NIH
numbers look... odd, now.


> as for your point 2), you may well be right that
> there is no evidence of impecunious authors being turned away.

I don't have the stats but I'll ask whether PLoS makes them available.
I know I've seen some figures for PLoS somewhere, but I don't think I've
ever seen any for BMC.


> And I wonder what would happen if non-paying authors would start
> to flood the PLoS and BMC journals with their submissions.

Well, someone has to pay the costs of publishing -- if there are
genuinely enough impecunious authors out there doing publication quality
work, various subsidy schemes (including the simple one of raising fees)
come to mind.  After all, subscription journals effectively just lay the
subsidy burden on readers.  But given the cost of doing STM research in
the first place, I have my doubts about any floods of waiver requests.
(I don't know about other fields.)


> the only
> model that I can see that's better still, is one where the costs
> are borne not just by those articles that are published, but by
> all the articles that are being submitted

I like this idea too... but who is going to go first?  That would be a
brave publisher indeed.  Perhaps a Gold OA publisher could offer a deal:
pay [some fraction] upfront and eat it if you get rejected, or pay full
price only on acceptance?  I know I'd take that deal at PLoS ONE or BMC
Res Notes, where review is based solely on scientific merit, but not at
journals which ask reviewers to make guesses about future impact.  I'd
bet on my paper being sound science, but not on Joe Random Editor's gut
feeling as to whether my paper was "worthy" of the journal in question.

But then we are back to the question of what becomes of the underfunded:
do they not even get to submit in such a model?  Once again there will
have to be a waiver and/or subsidy method.


best,

Bill.