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

[Jan Velterop <jan@biomedcentral.com>]

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.

Traditional journals offer authors 'free' publication (I'm magnanimous and
I'm not counting colour charges and the like) in the (hitherto safe)
knowledge that they can recoup thousands of dollars per article from
Academe via subscriptions. Publishers of journals that are seen by a
sufficient number of institutions as 'must-have' have a strong incentive
to keep pushing up subscription fees. As the practice of justifying price
increases with the journals' expansion is widespread and tacitly accepted
by subscribers, they also have a strong incentive to publish more papers.
There are cases where journal expansion (and price increases based on it)
was even achieved by increasing the kerning or font-size of the text,
resulting in more pages for the same number of articles published.
Journals that are 'must-have' for institutions have a captive audience,
indeed a monopoly of sorts, and can pretty much increase their sizes and
raise their prices with impunity. And even if libraries cancel their
subscriptions the 'attrition' of circulation is used as a justification
for further price rises. Voila, the roots of the 'Serials Crisis'.

Another frequent contributor to these discussion lists, Albert Henderson,
argues that the cause of the serials crisis must be found in the library
budgets, specifically the fact that these budgets for decades haven't been
increased in proportion with the total cost of research. He's right, too.
Budgets are cut when they can be cut, though. Libraries are soft targets,
for both publishers and budget administrators, caught between the rock of
budget limitations and the hard place of publishers' pricing policies. But
were a system, such as the input-paid open access model (where publication
is regarded an integral part of doing research), widespread, would budgets
really be cut if it meant that research could be carried out but not
published? Isn't most research, certainly that done with public funds,
pretty much deemed not to have taken place at all if it's not 'evidenced'
by being published?

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
> http://www.corhealth.com