Re: PLoS

["Anthony Watkinson" <anthony.watkinson@btopenworld.com>]

I do not agree with David Prosser that we have found a sustainable OA
model for publishers or for that matter a transition model that looks
likely to work for those publisher and their editors/editorial boards that
have to put their money where there mouth is. Because we currently have no
evidence of how volatile or not the enthusiasm of authors to pay for OA is
going to be the decision making process is nothing like the relative
predictability of likely income for a journal at the time of pricing. As
far as subscription income is concerned, it is difficult for the
difference between budget and actual to be that different unless their is
a RoweCom episode. As a former Head of Journals at OUP I would be very
surprised if the pricing procedures in that organisation have changed
dramatically since my time (except that they are much more efficiently
handled!) and presumably he was involved in these pricing procedures
before he got his present job.

The three publishers he mentions may be thinking about handling the
transition (I am sure they are) in the sense that they intend to reduce
subscription rates to their journals in 2005 but there have (as far as I
can tell) been no announcements yet. I cannot indeed find any mention of
OA on the site of the American Physiological Society but it is a big site
and it may be hidden away somewhere.  OUP to their credit have given lots
of information and rational justification of what they are doing.

OUP point out:

"The 2004 author charges represent a substantial discount on the charge that
would be required to fully fund publication."

COB point out:

"Authors choosing to take advantage of the open access alternative will be
charged a publication fee, which, as an introductory offer, will be
heavily subsidised by The Company of Biologists".

In practice, and I know that OUP do not hide this fact and do not need to
hide it, the income from author charges in 2004 represents additional and
unbudgeted bonus for the accounts for the relevant journals this year.
This is hardly a subsidy! The crunch has yet to come.

However I do agree that he asks a reasonable question and one which any
other publisher will have to face up to. Is going OA safer than relying on
the current system to handle the expected increase in research and the
concomitant increase in research articles? Personally I do not have an
answer but it will be interesting to see some. I thought the
OhioLink/Academic Press first Big Deal (win,win,win) would not work
because librarians and their patrons would be more concerned with
selection than access and I am published on this topic. I do not find I am
good at the prediction of models but others are. Perhaps Mr. Prosser is
good at predictions - time will tell.

I have never before seen this expected increase used as an argument for OA
and I am interested in the implications.  One answer is that SPARC and the
ARL, instead of omitting a line showing the increase of papers in journals
from their graphs showing increase in journal prices, might start lobbying
for more money for libraries because of this increase. Libraries do need
better funding

Anthony Watkinson

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Prosser" <david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Saturday, February 28, 2004 3:26 AM
Subject: RE: PLoS

> Naturally, there are going to be problems with any change in business
> model.  There are risks associated with the transition from
> subscription-based access to open access.  My hope is that the transition
> model minimises the risks and makes it more attractive to publishers to
> make the change.  We are already seeing this with, for example, the
> Company of Biologists, the American Physiological Society, and Oxford
> University Press, who are all experimenting with variations of the model.
>
> Publishers are going to be able to make educated estimates on the
> proportion of authors taking up the open access option and use these
> estimates to decide on subscription prices.  The odd pricing cycle for
> journals means that they have to make estimates of subscribers and costs
> well in advance, this will be one more variable to factor in.  My advice
> (for what it is worth) is for the publishers to be conservative with their
> estimates of author-uptake.
>
> Regarding realistic costs, BioMedCentral and PLoS would argue that they
> have set their prices at sustainable levels - time will tell.  For the
> transition publishers, the Company of Biologists have a charge which looks
> to me as if it could be sustainable.
>
> As an aside, there is an interesting gap in this discussion.  Those
> society publishers who have publicly expressed doubts about the open
> access model appear to have no doubts about the current system.  The risks
> of a move to open access are compared to the stability of
> subscription-based access.  But surely the current system is not risk
> free.  We have not (as far as I am aware) seen any publishers give us
> their vision of the future based on subscription access - is it really
> business as usual?  When major customers (such as UC) describe the current
> model as 'unsustainable' don't the society publisher get concerned?
> Perhaps Mr Watkinson could give us his prediction of what the environment
> for society publishers will be like in five or ten years time as the
> amount of material to be published continues to increase, library budgets
> continue to be squeezed, and ever increasing proportions of those budgets
> go to a small number of big deals.
>
> David C Prosser
> E-mail: david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk